At 02:05 19/04/99 +1000, Rob wrote:
>G'day Chris,
>
>>Why do you need comfort?
>>
>>Is marxism just some mental style accessory, a lapel badge, to allow fellow
>>sufferers to gather in a bitter self-pitying intellectual ghetto?
>
>World-wide suffering (that's gonna get us all) one day bothers me Chris.
>Living in a world that won't even recognise structural problems and
>generalised suffering bothers me, Chris. Living in a system one feels is
>absolutely incapable of addressing those problems bothers me, Chris.
>
< >
>What do you have in mind, Chris?
It is absolutely impossible to orientate oneself at all, even in low
periods, if you do not have faith in people. That is, in the cooperative
tendencies of human beings.
And what I have in mind .... are theoretical conclusions that merely
express, in general terms, actual relations springing from an existing
class struggle, from a historical movement going on under our very eyes.
That we should not attempt to set up any sectarian principles of our own by
which to shape and mould the movement of working people. We should differ
from other progressive people, with whom we should work closely, only in
these respects
1. In the national struggles of working people of the different countries
we should bring to the fore the common interests of working people of the
world independently of all nationality.
2. In the various stages of development of the struggle of working people
against capital we should always emphasise the interests of the movement as
a whole.
Too abstract?
Then join War on Want's campaign for a Tobin tax.
Anyway we as individuals we are all going to die one day, so we cannot be
too preoccupied by suffering.
Chris Burford
London
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