The occupation of Wall Street is an event, not a program, a policy, a "ine." It is profoundly wrong to "critrize an event. Events require explanation in some larger context, not correction.
This error seems to regard some spontaneous rather than critical conception of the role of "the spontaneous" in left politics. Perhaps it is worthwhile seeing more pre isely Lenin's response to the (apparently) spontaneous. Some years ago in a brief exchange with Dout I pointed out that Lenin presupposed "spontaneous" activity; what he opposed was was _worship_ of spontaneity. This can be made a bit more precise and throw some light on the needed perspective on the Wall Street Occupation.
Lunacharsky, in Revolutionary silhouettes, points out that Lenin in a special sense was more opportunist than Trotsky, who was the more "orthodox" in his Marxism. What Lunacharsky was trying to put his finger on, I think, was the tendency in Trotsky's thought to assume that tactics (practice) could be directly dictated by theory. Consider the following passage from Lenin:
****If that windbag Trotsky now writes (unfortunately, side by side with Parvus) that "a Father Gapon could appear only once", that "there is no room for a second Gapon", he does so simply because he is a windbag. If there were no room in Russia for a second Gapon, there would be no room for a truly "great", consummated democratic revolution. To become great, to evoke 1789-93, not 1848-50, and to surpass those years, it must rouse the vast masses to active life, to heroic efforts, to "fundamental historic creativeness"; it must raise them out of frightful ignorance, unparalleled oppression, incredible backwardness, and abysmal dullness. The revolution is already raising them and will raise them completely . . . .****
Paraphrasing: Such 'spontaneous' (i.d., contingent, unpredictable) EVENTS as the appearance of _A_ Gapon. And Lenin is wholly correct in reference either to "Revolution" or to a mass movement of "the left" (the coming into existence of A Left) in the United States today. Father Gapon was an obvious bit of "some magical process of spontaneous discovery" - and of course one bit of that "magic" has already come through for the Wall Street Occupation, though the murder of an innocent man by the State of Georgia (with the approval of the Supreme Court) merely to maintain the morale of the Savannah cops is a bit grimmer than a random mouthy priest. But Lenin in the passage quoted did note that _that_ sort of "spontaneous" event was predictable; I stopped just before this: ". . . the government itself is facilitating the process [of raising consciousness] by its desperate resistance."
And for such an event I cannot think of any possible "analysis" more profound and more useful than "bad shit is happening." Indeed it is, and we really do not know yet how to grasp it; to find out will require quite a few more _events_, mostly unpredictable.
Carrol
^^^^^^^ CB: Hear, hear .
The Paris Commune was relatively spontaneous in that the Communards didn't have socialist consciousness . However, Marx said, "...as a practical step that was more important than hundreds of programmes and arguments"
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/ch03.htm#s1
1. What Made the Communards' Attempt Heroic?
It is well known that in the autumn of 1870, a few months before the Commune, Marx warned the Paris workers that any attempt to overthrow the government would be the folly of despair. But when, in March 1871, a decisive battle was forced upon the workers and they accepted it, when the uprising had become a fact, Marx greeted the proletarian revolution with the greatest enthusiasm, in spite of unfavorable auguries. Marx did not persist in the pedantic attitude of condemning an “untimely” movement as did the ill-famed Russian renegade from marxism, Plekhanov, who in November 1905 wrote encouragingly about the workers' and peasants' struggle, but after December 1905 cried, liberal fashion: "They should not have taken up arms."
Marx, however, was not only enthusiastic about the heroism of the Communards, who, as he expressed it, "stormed heaven". Although the mass revolutionary movement did not achieve its aim, he regarded it as a historic experience of enormous importance, as a certain advance of the world proletarian revolution, as a practical step that was more important than hundreds of programmes and arguments. Marx endeavored to analyze this experiment, to draw tactical lessons from it and re-examine his theory in the light of it.
The only “correction” Marx thought it necessary to make to the Communist Manifesto he made on the basis of the revolutionary experience of the Paris Commune.