[lbo-talk] Graber on consensus

Carrol Cox cbcox at ilstu.edu
Mon Mar 4 07:57:11 PST 2013


Andie N: > I haven't read Graber, and I suppose I must, but whatever illumination he's
> offered anyone, including anarchist activists, has to have been recent,
and
> important movements have been going on without him for the last 40 years.
> For a Maoist if some sort, Carroll, it's surprising that you ignore the
major
> revolution of the last 40 years, the women's movement. What happened to
> the other half the sky?

The women's movement may yet become one of the kernels of a growing left. But the "Movement" (or coherent collection of movements) that I look for will consist of masses in movement for radical transformations of specific features of capitalism (e.g. withdrawal of u.s. troops from abroad; stopping of fracking & tar-sands mining; retreat at leas of the massive increase in repressive power of the state). And it will contain growing forces demanding "too much democracy -- i.e. for the overthrow of capitalism. My assumption is that Bellamy Foster is correct: Global Warming must be stopped in the next generation. (It may already be too late, but what the hell.) I also assume that capitalism is incapable of NOT growing. It is NECESSITY, not hope for something better, that is the primary motor force of anti-capitalist growth.

I have been and am an admirer of Mao & the Chinese Revolution. But the first thing to learn from that revolution is the contrasting meaning of "thought" and "theory"; "Maoism" is incoherent, since Mao was not a theorist and he (and his comrades) focused on the demands of China, producing thought that does not travel over space and time. I suppose if any document encapsulates my thought it is the 1898 Stuttgart speeches of Rosa Luxemburg.

You've been away during a period in which my thought changed significantly, and I became _more_ convinced that the complete overthrow of capitalism was a necessity for human survival, making irrelevant the questions of whether that was possible or whether the results would be (in themselves) desirable. A return to feudalism or palace economies would be preferable to the continued existence of capitalist relations of production.

Carrol



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