The late Mark Jones cut through all the tangled ideological webs, both Marxcist and bourgeois, in his simple label for the Russian Revolution (which applies to _all_ the revolutionary struggles of the 20th century): The Bolshevikds, he said, established a Liberated Zone, one which held out for 70 years before colapsing. It was not a workers state. It was not a capitalist state. It did not fit _any_ of the byzantine forulations which attempted to foce it into one or another conception of what a Revolution Must Be If It Is Official. Late in Marx's life he was interviewed by a New York reporter. At the end of the interview, the reporter paused, then asked:
What is? And after a silence so long the reporter thought the old man had fallen asleep, came the reply: Struggle! The Twentieth Century was a record of such struggle. Those who try to pass judgment as from the Throne of Petrer on what was R8ight and what was Wrong, on the precise errors and betrayals and wanderings from the True Path of True Revolution insult the graves of the millions who died (under any number of banners) in those struggles. There is no True Path. There Never Was. There Never Will Be. Marxists hae no crystal ball. Carrol _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
