On Wed, Nov 10, 2010 at 1:10 PM, Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu> wrote:
> Alan Rudy
> On Wed, Nov 10, 2010 at 11:32 AM, Wojtek S <wsoko52 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I somehow missed this, and I usually try to read all Marv's posts:
>
> > Marv: "to lead the workers to state power through forms of political
> class
> > struggle ranging from demonstrations to armed insurrection, its highest
> > form."
>
> Marv, in the modern state, "armed insurrection" is a pipedream. This does
> not mean that capitalism can be "peacefullyd" overcome, but it has been
> demonstrated that modern states (and whether capitalist or something else
> is
> irrelevant) can be overthrown by massive and continued 'illegal'
> demonstrations (perhaps / probably) accompanited by various other less
> 'formal' activities, but if and only if the military refused to fire at
> some
> pont. In 1958 DeGaulle was uncertain enough on this point that he made a
> trip to NATO headquarters to interrogate his generals on the probability of
> the army reaming "loyal," before he began his actions to suppress the
> continuing uproar.
>
> Moreover, "armed insurrection" seems to imply a more centralized (and
> probably sole) command (e.g. the fantasy of "democratic centralism,"
> sometime sdmisnamed "Leninism"). But in the core capitalist nations, there
> will never again be a "unified" movement in the old sense of a hegemonic
> party determining strategy. That was always something of a pipedream anyhow
>
> I am deliberately vague. Political thought as well as military thought is
> always attempting to plan the "next" war in the image of the "last" war,
> and
> it never works. But at least I have the _last_ war (the '60s) not the war
> before the war before the last war in mind. My image will prove false, but
> however it works out, one aspect of the '60s is almost certain to
> characterize future mass uprisings -- the absence of a central hegemonic
> party or any centralized command to carry out sdystematic "armed
> insurrection." The term is an an anachronism. And of course, "peaceful,
> democratic roads to socialism" are just as absurd. Marxists, as Mao
> mentioned, have no crystal ball, but we can see some of the things that
> simply cannot be.
>
> Carrol
>
>
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>
-- ********************************************************* Alan P. Rudy Dept. Sociology, Anthropology and Social Work Central Michigan University 124 Anspach Hall Mt Pleasant, MI 48858 517-881-6319