[lbo-talk] "We should"

Carrol Cox cbcox at ilstu.edu
Thu Oct 13 15:43:54 PDT 2016


I just did a search on lbo-talk archives f "we should"; the result was 8901 hits!

Who is _we_?

The crippling element in all but a few lbo-talk posters was the assumption that _we_ existed! It is that assumption of an existent "we" that is the core defense of capitalist anarchy. (I say "anarchy" because of course Rosa L's prophecy of "socialism or barbarism" is no longer a prediction but history. We live in the barbarism she predicted, and the main _symptom_ of that barbarism (an insult to those originally labelled "barbarians") is ignorance of a fact that "we" needs to be created, and that to say "we should" is a surrender to the permanence of that barbarianism.

The few at least partially outside that barbarian world know, that above all, our task is to CREATE A WE. The essence of crackpot realism is the premise that 'We" already exists and that it makes sense for the members of that (non-existent) We to carry on a 'civilized' discussion of what "we" should do. The few who attempt to resist that barbarianism know that our first task is to create a "WE" -- a 'we' that can then labor to generate a resistance to the barbarianism in which we now stumble along.

Carrol



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