[lbo-talk] commit no evil, because evil is too expensive?

Carrol Cox cbcox at ilstu.edu
Tue May 7 10:10:00 PDT 2013


Shag writes: " Doesn't matter if it is effective at changing conservatives' minds."

Agreed. But this is too weak. It is politically incorrect to even think about _either_ so-called conservatives _or_ "middle of the roaders_. Such concern turns away from politics.

For A Left to come into existence there must be more activists who are continually thinking about what to do next, even when there is nothing to do, and doing something even when they know it will fail to do anything.

The outlook is incredibly bleak. The capitalist offensive that began in the 1970s in continuing to gain momentum, and as Marx predicted in Chapter 14, Wages, Price and Profit, immiseration is reducing workers to one level mass incapable of any higher goal. And knowingly or not, a huge number of passive radicals are adopting the slogan of Richard II, Let us sit upon the ground and tell sad stories of the death of kings.

We are dependent upon contingent explosions which open people to radical agitation. But unless those leftists who are in some way active keep it up, year after year, there will be no local groups & national communication channels through which to conduct the agitation which becomes possible.

Thinking about conservatives and moderates is worse than useless; it is aggressively reactionary. Think about how to turn passive radicals into active radicals under current conditions.

Carrol



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