> As Mike Beggs said, there is going to have be a lot of
> reform before we ever get back to revolution.
My view on this is really that socialists need a flourishing reform movement to engage with - not that we need to be the reformists - although I don't think there's necessarily a contradiction between reform and revolution.
I like the Viet Minh quote. We don't have much power to create the conditions in which our politics could spread, and we don't really know what flowers are going to take off. That, I take it, is Carrol's position and I agree to that extent. People should get involved where they feel they can make the most difference. But unlike Carrol I don't think we should hold back from comradely or even sometimes uncomradely criticism, because that's a vital part of how people learn and movements develop. I was once a teenage anarcho-liberal in the 'anti-globalisation' movement, and it's only thanks to the criticisms of Doug and others that I came to my present correct views.
I literally have trouble organising breakfast so I have respect for anyone who can get something like the Wall Street occupation together. But I really have reservations about the effectiveness of developing political strategy and communications by consensus. It's incoherent and that matters. Better, I think, for a group that can agree on a program or analysis at least to some extent to raise a banner and see who flocks to it.
Mike