At any rate, Sitrin says that the days before the uprisings of the 19th and 20th, including on those days, people were looting. Sometimes, they were going to stores and asking for food.
I think we probably have a very sanitized view of the history of social change. I very much doubt that we can separate good rebellions from bad ones, let alone say that only bad developments come from looting and rioting.
I am reminded, now, of the letters between Jefferson and Adams in which Adams tells Jefferson that he has a cavalier attitude toward rebellion among the population, which Adams calls terrorism.
"You never felt the terrorism of Shays’s Rebellion in Massachusetts. I believe you never felt the terrorism of Gallatin’s Insurrection in Pennsylvania.
You certainly never felt the terrorism excited by Genet in 1793, when ten thousand people in the streets of Philadelphia, day after day, threatened to drag Washington out of his house and effect a revolution in the government, or compel it to declare war in favor of the French Revolution and against England. The coolest and the firmest minds, even among the Quakers in Philadelphia, have given their opinions to me that nothing but the yellow fever
could have saved the United States from a total revolution of government. I have no doubt you was fast asleep in philosophical tranquility when ten thousand people, and perhaps many more, were parading the streets of Philadelphia on the evening of my Fast Day [25 April 1799]; when Governor Mifflin himself thought it his duty to order a patrol of horse and foot to preserve the peace; when Market Street was as full as men could stand by one another, and even before my door; when some of my domestics, in frenzy, determined to sacrifice their lives in my defense; when all were ready to make a desperate sally among the multitude and others were with difficulty and danger dragged back by the others; when I myself judged it prudent and necessary to order chests of arms from the War Office to be brought through bylanes and back doors, determined to defend my house at the expense of my life and the lives of the few, very few, domestics and friends within it. What think you of terrorism, Mr. Jefferson?"
Alad Rudy wrote: <> Dear Woj, <> <> Who, here, has expressed the desire or advanced the model you <> constantly <> attribute to the left? Who, here on the this realm of leftish <> discussion, <> has said they want an economic collapse and all the misery that goes <> with <> it? Who, here, has suggested that the kind of misery that goes with <> economic crisis is more likely to bring a revolution encompassing the <> democratization of production, the state and civil society rather than <> one <> that'll bring intensified barbarism? <> <> Do you actually read this list or do you just use it as a place to <> spew <> insufficiently thought out, rarely sufficiently engaged and even more <> rarely well-argued - claims about straw wo/men? Did you pay any <> attention <> to the myriad discussions focused on the property destruction and <> police <> violence in London, on the dynamics and meaning of OWS, on black <> blocs? <> Have you read a single thing Carroll has written lo these many years? <> How <> about the exchanges about race/racism? Any of the discussions of <> environmental crises? Who, and please be specific, is making the <> apocalypse-produces-healthy-revolution argument? Doug? Carroll? Shag? <> Me? <> Dennis? Ferenc? Carl? Joanna? Chuck? John G? SA? Jordan? <> <> If you have so little use for "the left" - a phenomenon that you know <> a <> number of folks here deny even exists in a form worthy of the name - <> why <> are you here? If you want to disparage an element of the left that <> isn't <> here, go where it is and put up your dukes but don't tar folks here <> with <> positions you know full well nobody holds. <> <> A <> ___________________________________ <> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk <>
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