John Bunzl wrote:
> all too
> familiar retreat behind the past observations of Marx, Mao or others,
> however appropriate they may have been to the world predicament in their
> time.
You misunderstand. I don't think this because I admire Marx and Mao. I admire
Marx and Mao because they said it. It would be true even if they had not written
on the point. Abstract plans of a new world are *bad* -- they are destructive.
They help keep the world as it is rather than help change it. As long as we
believe
we need plans for the future we will be unable to struggle to bring that future
about.
The future (the quite unpredictable future) will be discovered in the process of
the
struggle to destroy that which is destroying us now.
There probably is a scattering of people around who were persuaded to socialism
(or to any kind of revolution) by glowing plans of what the world might be. But
in
my 70 years I have never met anyone like that. Rather I have encountered many
people who got into struggle against certain evils and in the process of
struggle
discovered that those specific evils were related to other evils -- and also in
the
process of struggle discovered the delight that comes from solidarity in the
struggle. Only at that point, usually, and this was my own case, did they at all
start to think about what the society of the future should be like. Those of us
who early realized that this planning was a mug's game stayed in the struggle.
Those who got mired in plans for the future eventually dropped out.
Carrol
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