On 2012-02-11, at 10:07 PM, Shane Mage wrote:
>
> On Feb 11, 2012, at 7:09 PM, Wojtek S wrote:
>
>> Shane: ".Now the common interests of the ruling class so far exceed
>> their divisions"
>>
>> [WS:] This is just your opinion without any proof. Why would the 19th
>> or for that matter the 16th century be different than the 21 st
>> century? What structural factors - other than the vile character of
>> the rules and their lackeys which is pretty much constant - can
>> explain than[sic] "now" is fundamentally different than "then"?
>
> "structural," "fundamentally"--this is asking for some theoretical schema characterizing centuries. Which would be pure nonsense. I merely pointed out a fact: the difference between Philippe Égalité and his cousin Louis Capet was marked by a guillotine, the difference between Barack Obama and George Bush was marked by an embrace.
Um, Shane, two different historical contexts, no? One a social revolution, the other a stable bourgeois democracy. If the system were to exhaust its capacity for reform and the growing polarization at the base of American society were to creep steadily upward, you'd see serious divisions emerge within the ruling class about how to cope with the unrest, with many of its members, particularly intellectuals, abandoning their class to join in the fight for a new society.