On Sun, 2009-08-16 at 13:37 +1000, Tom O'Lincoln wrote: > 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.
That's a fair point and I should have been clearer. Marx is dead too after all and I think he's highly relevant. As someone who's studied history, I do think it's important - it's just that most of what passes for "debate" on Stalin and Trotsky could not really be classified as history, it's just a slanging match. Yes, we do need to learn from the past of our movement, but it needs to be in a way that actually makes a useful contribution to real struggle. Otherwise it's just a type of "more radical/pure than thou" exercise. Cheers, John ________________________________________________ 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
