Present as History.
As present, it never makes sense.
[CLIP]
(A speculative post -- partly inspired by the changing 'flavor' of posts on this list over the last week, as writers shifted their focus on the Occupation event(s).)
Doug wonders: All that shit that Lenin wrote? Waste of time.
Well, I got and am getting quite a bit from Lenin; I suppose everyone has to decide for him/herself. A poster not long ago on Marxism-Thaxis was pushing the necessity of developing a "Party of a New Type." He meant a Democratic Centralist Party. That's the meaning generations of revolutionaries have gotten out of that phrse from WITBD. And they have read the whole of Lenin in that light. I did for quite a few years back in the '70s and '80s. Now it turns out Lenin meant a non-conspiratorial party, which all preceding Russian Revolutionary parties had been. He wanted a party that carried on agitation and propaganda, which required a certain 'openness." Hence it needed the guidance of "professionals" -- i.e., people skilled in not getting arrested while carrying out illegal agitation.
Frost offers a nice gloss on my post, though of course one will have to pick and choose among various ways to view/use his poem.
Carrol
The Road Not Taken
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.