Good a.m. First off - I must and do apologise for any possible intemperance in my language yesterday. If there was any - it would have been to both Marv and Michael.
I will confess I was irritated! But thankfully I seemed on review of my own message, to be just asking questions - albeit in an uncomfortable, and also in a somewhat abrupt manner. Second I was - and I am still - put very much in mind of the 'Bearded Man''s remark that goes: "Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living. And just as they seem to be occupied with revolutionizing themselves and things, creating something that did not exist before, precisely in such epochs of revolutionary crisis they anxiously conjure up the spirits of the past to their service..." The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. Karl Marx 1852; at: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1852/18th-brumaire/ch01.htm This whole discussion has reminded me of this quote. And that "anxious conjuring up" of spirits will continue and those will enter both into the air around ours and our future 'heirs' in this battle of ideas and actions. So it is important to address those questions from those spirits and their times. Especially when the subjective factor is lacking and the moment is pregnantly quiet (despite the echoing cries of our people in Palestine, Ukraine, and wherever). We should strive to address those spirits to be able to say them "I know you, and this is what you did and this is why you did it". The same questions they faced overall, even if in a modified form, will arise. By a 'subjective' factor, I am as most here will understand - talking about a party that does hold some command. I see none right now. While Louis was furious at me for talking about objective and subjective factors, the notion holds validity for me. So I will as the day progresses respond to each of your points as well as I can, again addressing Marv and Michael. I have actually never shirked from that since I came of political age. I might tell a short anecdote if I can be forgiven for doing so - about the process of coming to political age. I was introduced to Ml-ism as an alienated brown guy in London, who had been beaten up by the Nat Front fascists - around 1968-1969. When meeting the ML-ist movement I was very attracted, but could not get my head around what I was reading about the camps. On getting to university - the first in a very large extended family who had the chance - I landed in a commune with good people of many stripes. But I could not understand where all the differences of opinion came from. I took a decision to 'take a sabbatical' - and I read everything I could lay my hands on - by VIL, Trotsky and JVS on the big dividing issues in turn. The party; Socialism in one country; the peasantry; the role of the national vs comprador bourgeoisie; China-Shanghai-KMT-CPC; the Comintern; Dimitrov; Polish war; Spain; Hitler and the WW2... etc. I would read one on the topic and the opposite view, and try to decide who made more sense to me. By the end of about 2 years I was a I thought a MList. My Trotskyite friends disowned me, the anarchists shrugged... and I moved on. It has been thus that I carried on, but clearly I had decided - good people were on other sides of fences. And this was not a good thing for a weak and disunited left. So, Marv - I'll address your central query as I can. It may take me a bit, but it will be today. Same with Michael! Be well. More to come. H -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#29570): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/29570 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/105042632/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/8674936/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
