Hugh be a bit more specific. The stuff below says nothing.
So far the book seems to be saying nothing new and seems rather convoluted regarding
what
it does say. It might contain the odd little interesting insight. However this is a
somewhat impressionistic conclusion
Warm regards
George Pennefather
Be free to check out our Communist Think-Tank web site at
http://homepage.eircom.net/~beprepared/
Whatever you do don't be intimidated. Mezsaros is a nice bloke and has
clear, sensible stuff to say even if it's not all hunky-dory -- like his
views on the party, say. But treat the book like riding a fiery stallion!
Jump on, dig in your spurs and hold on for dear life. Then when you get
where he's taking you, hitch him to the rail, go into the pub, have a cold
one and think about it. Then just go back and look in detail at whatever
intrigued you most.
You don't often get such a blend of serious thought and enthusiastic
full-blooded hatred of capitalism.
It's a good book to have in the mixer if we want to make a lens that'll
focus the fuzzy wills at present floating around like will-o-the-wisps over
a marsh into something that'll fuse the power of the contradictions
beginning to explode with a powerful united conscious revolutionary will to
replace capitalism with socialism, in other words to dump imperialism and
replace it with first one or two, and then dozens of workers states.
So many of the left who are radicalizing by the second in the States are
still befuddled by such goals as Henwood's "weaker capitalism" -- as if we
could be content with crippling the beast. As if a dragon with its fangs
drawn and its clawed extremities chopped off, its eyes stuck out and its
back broken, would be any good to anybody. We don't need or want a dragon,
especially one that stank when it was "healthy" and will stink worse when
it's got rotting lumps of itself lying around the place. We want our Maiden
in Distress and her Hero (I'm thinking of Andromeda and Perseus, but each
to his own -- there's a nice statue of Andro at the Atheneum art gallery in
Helsinki by the way) to live happily after with the Grail churning out a
wealth of material and cultural goodies for them, and for that only
socialism will be good enough, not some Social-Democratic fuck-up that
sweeps a few crumbs to the masses for a couple of decades, crowing over the
taming of the dragon, but then lets the dragon get back to its old
maiden-eating habits as soon as it's re-grown its claws and fangs.
Cheers,
Hugh
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