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A phone call this morning from my granddaughter shocked me with the realization that it was my 72nd birthday. What can one say about being so bloody old? Well, for a start there are good friends of mine who did not make it and they are in my thoughts now. I would like, of course, to be able to say I have grown in wisdom and all that, but alas I remain as ever fundamentally embedded in a kind of wistful foolishness, that makes me even now still perpetually optimistic about what Trotsky called 'the Communist future'. Once in the City Square in Brisbane about 1977 I read at a demonstration the following lines from Trotsky's testament. I was roundly booed for my pains such was the strength of anti-communism among people who saw themselves as civil libertarians. But the words are still beautiful and they come back to me now on my birthday "Natasha has just come up to the window from the courtyard and opened it wider so that the air may enter more freely into my room. I can see the bright green strip of grass beneath the wall, and the clear blue sky above the wall, and sunlight everywhere. Life is beautiful. Let the future generations cleanse it of all evil, oppression and violence and enjoy it to the full." comradely Gary ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
