[lbo-talk] Present as History was Re: mass arres....

Carrol Cox cbcox at ilstu.edu
Sun Oct 2 09:33:41 PDT 2011


On 10/1/2011 10:35 PM, Carrol Cox wrote:

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.



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