[lbo-talk] raw human energy

[shag carpet bomb]

At 09:56 AM 5/7/2010, Julio Huato wrote:
>shag carpet bomb wrote:
>
> > julio - could you explain more? you often talk about political motion, so i
> > was wondering about the "raw human energy" that is a "fuel."
>
>These are the links:
>
>http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/2009/2009-October/014107.html
>
>http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/2009/2009-October/014210.html
>
>http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/2009/2009-October/014211.html
>
>My point is that human action has objective consequences regardless of
>how people perceive and rationalize it.  And that almost any struggle
>against oppression can lead to challenging capitalism, or help prepare
>the challenge.  My favorite illustration is the Mexican and the Cuban
>revolutions, since I view myself as a child of these two processes.
>Most people got involved in them in reaction to some personal
>grievance or even driven by petty or superficial motivations, but the
>process transformed them.  The revolution revolutionized the
>revolutionaries -- turned protorevolutionaries into full
>revolutionaries.  How far they pushed things depended, of course, on
>more than their intentions and energy.
>
>I'm not claiming that people can build communism without conscious
>deliberation or without preconditions.  All I'm saying is that we
>start wherever we are at.  There's as much basis to fetishize or
>idealize the revolutionary moment as there is to view an orgasm as all
>that matters in lovemaking or, more broadly, in a relationship.  Not
>that I consider myself an authority on these matters, but orgasms
>would be little without what the staring and teasing preceding them,
>and their effects would last little without the cuddling and the
>cooing.  Since I'm at it, to stretch the metaphor a bit further, I'll
>add that one enters a relationship with certain preconceptions and
>intentions, often predicated on imaginary traits one blithely
>attributes to one's lover, but the process of relating to another
>complex human being transforms everything -- oneself, the lover, the
>relationship, and many things around them.
>
>I should now go and order a good coffee. :-)

well, as I said offlist, I thought you should light up a cigarette too. :)

so another question - several actually:

1. what about the petty grievances of the tea party? how do they fit into 
this theory? it's certainly "raw human energy" no? if what counts most is 
their action, then... ?

2. the lover/beloved analogy. so are you saying that our preconceptions 
about, say, the tea party would change once engaged in a relationship -- 
common social struggle -- with them? i mean, would we find them not the 
racists we thought they were? if they turn out to be, say, really really 
really insistant that homophobia isn't a disease, that it's a normal human 
reaction based on evolutionary history, etc. and they were to insist that, 
if we all want to keep fucking together, then you'd better accept that 
about them.

or am i stretching the metaphor too far now? :p

i mean, sure, everyone assumes that the consciousness of "the people" is 
going to change - or we want it to anyway. what about our own? as leftists 
engaged in struggle with these sorts of groups, perhaps we have something 
to learn from them? perhaps our theories must be revised as a consequence, etc.

i'm getting at what you say: the revolutionaries were revolutionized - the 
proto-revolutionaries were.

but if we take the metaphor of lovemaking seriously, then it's not just the 
beloved who changes in response to our ministrations. are we not being 
'ministrated' back? ;p you rub her back and nibble her toes, get her wet 
and ready and then what? plunge in?

ha ha

i'm goofing with the metaphor but do you see where I'm going with this? It 
seems like a one-sided relationship.

shag

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