On 5/22/07, sartesian <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Euell Gibbons valuable, but Grundrisse irrelevant?
Nuts.
I resemble that remark!
As for your example of socio-economic options:
Do you think Cuba would have lasted 6 months without the victory of the
Russian Revolution?
You think the Venezuelan struggle would have made it this far if oil
prices were anywhere close to the actual costs of production?
Would not have.
Guess what? Lenin read Marx, and studied Hegel. Trotsky reports, as
president of the Petrograd Soviet, on the sophistication of the Russian
workers, their understanding of Marx and their eagerness for "theory."
I'm not going to argue against the value of theory... until it
impinges on necessary action, and we really need that action to
achieve proactive democracy, soon, before the rest of the world shuns
us as an international pariah and we have to make war for everything
we aren't capable of producing ourselves because no one wants to deal
with us anymore, at least not on mutually economically beneficial
terms... That time is already here with a number of commodities,
AFAICT. 'Corn Wars' anyone?
Not today... but 40 years from now... when we realllly need that
ethanol, and Canada has been scraped clean of (and it's waters & air
toxic because of) tarsands production.
We are not quite that close to the end of "hydrocarbon industrial
civilization" that predictions of imminent apocalypse will replace good
old fashioned class struggle,
Gasoline in California is hovering near the $4.00 mark, and a realtor
from San Jose I quoted a while back say much of her sales are coming
from people who can no longer afford the commute from Tracy, and other
outlying communities.
I say, for survivability and sustainability, it needs to go the other
way, but (f'rinstance) moving somewhere to earn $$$ to buy food has
become more 'rational' than staying put where you want to be, and
plant a garden . I have a hard time rationalizing that rationale, and
subconsciously, so does the person moving back to San Jose. I'm sure
they are happy to be back, to build a better, more livable, happier
San Jose (Damn tongue! Get out of my cheek!)
much less galvanize millions to action.
The political IS the personal. Innovators (sociologically), empowered
or not, are required.
..or as someone else put it... We need more heroes, less zeros.
Each one reach one
Each one teach one.
Nobody can DO everything
But everybody can DO something.
Leigh
