Carrol Cox wrote: > And frankly I doubt the good faith of > anyone who asks such questions. You piss me off but I retract that charge. But I want to push the issue a little further. Over the years I have in fact moved a number of people to become communist activists, and I have persuaded quite a few people to give more trust to communists than non-communists without becoming communists themselves. And I have *never* once, even tentatively, given any assurance that socialism would actually work. Neither have I ever adopted a "sceptical" perspective -- I have been quite dogmatic in fact in insisting that we can't know whether socialism will work or not and we can't know whether we can even establish it or not. I have simply argued in innumerable ways, *always* taking off from the activist experience of those I was talking to, that we had to resist capitalism, and that the overthrow of capitalism would provide a new field of struggle. In fact the only thing that I have ever been really dogmatic about is this point. I have always encased my recruiting efforts beween two slogans as it were: Barbarianism or socialism (and maybe barbarianism in any case) What is? Struggle. (That represents close to my entire ontology.) And as a result I have always been able to give the same reply to all complaints about this or that error, defeat, crime of this or that socialist movement (in power or not): "It's a struggle." And people do accept this if you haven't begun your relationship with them by spinning a lot of bullshit about the certain glories of socialism or given this that recipe for the cookshops of the future. Please note a key phrase above, "the activist experience of those I was talking to." I simply don't talk serious politics to those who are not already engaged in struggle of some sort -- some struggle which in some way or other I am engaged in with them. And this is why the experience of academics or journalists -- even very good and very committed activists and journalists -- is not only irrelevant but to some extent incompatible with the political agitation and organization. (And this is why, also, I never for a moment fooled myself into thinking that my teaching was or even could be political in any meaningful sense.) The journalist or academic has an essentially passive audience, and has no real relationship to that audience except through the words/ideas he/she can put forth. That can be useful -- but it simply cannot be a model for political work. And in your continual demands for scenarios (for revolution) or some picture or other of socialism you speak as a journalist and/or academic. And I believe you said as much yourself in a post the other day. I believe journalists and academics can be comrades -- but they have to learn from history the limits of the academic or journalistic perspective. Carrol
