Yoshie:
Politics is essentially about winning over other people to your political vision and program of action. That's so whether it's electoral politics, social movement organizing, or armed struggle. If few agree with you, you can't put your political vision and program of action in practice. This point tends to get forgotten in America, probably because leftists are so few and so ill organized.
I probably have a completely different take on the period we are in. I see today much more like 1957-1960 rather than 1967-1970. It is a preparatory period in which Marxists are trying to influence the new generation of radicals who will be able to influence or lead the mass movement. Except for the immigrants' rights movement, there is no mass movement today. The trade union movement is in full retreat. The campuses are quiet. The Black community is atomized, etc. There are rumblings but nothing like a full scale radicalization. When a mass movement erupts, it will be very important to have a Marxist leadership that avoids the mistakes of the past. I am not speaking directly to the masses but to a younger generation that can fight for leadership. For these folks, I think that it is crucial to get grounded in the Marxist classics and how to develop a strategy that takes the relationship of class forces into account. I learned a lot from my experience in the 1967 to 1970 period and I want to transmit my lessons without the sectarian ideological baggage that went along with it. You of course seem far more interested in Iranian politics than what is going on here, so I probably don't have that much to offer you.
The world today can't be understood by reading "State and Revolution" or "The Civil War in France." You read those texts mainly to understand early 20th-century Russia or late 19th-century France.
Really? This is not the view of the Marxist movement. You of course are entitled to your own opinion.
Well, suppose folks are not exactly buying socialim right now in New York City. Then what?
The same thing was true in 1957. But I am not interested in reaching the masses directly. I am speaking to what Lenin called "more advanced layers".
Checking US hegemony is an important task, no matter what you think.
Sorry. I can't all worked up over Mercusor.
I'd have stayed on it if you hadn't unsubscribed me to begin with. :->
I wouldn't have unsubbed you if you hadn't defied my instructions to stop writing about Iran for a week or so.
