John, you write: >>When people start on that kind of stuff, I just tend to say "Hang on a >>minute; hasn't that guy been dead for ages?" Someone a while ago asked if Nepal was having its 1905 or its 1917 (or some such question). My response was that Nepal was having its 2009 . . .<
I can understand the reaction. I had some involvement with the Indonesian upheavals of 1998 and wanted to scream every time somebody in my (then) political current announced that Indonesia had "had its February" and awaited its "October". But that doesn't make the dead guys irrelevant. The Indonesian activists I was relating to were very keen to learn from history, and if I had answered questions about permanent revolution, Trotsky and Stalin with "who cares" that would have been just as irresponsible as offering some crude "four legs good, two legs bad" formulation. We do need to learn from history, the test is whether we do it creatively or dogmatically. ________________________________________________ YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: [email protected] Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
