On 8/14/2011 4:31 PM, Sandwichman wrote: [CLIP] My three favorite quotes from Marx (young Marx, Marx of the Grudrisse, Marx near the end of his life)
Young Marx: No recipes for the cookshops of the future. Grundrisse: The anatomy of man is a key to the anatomy of the ape." (Not, notice, theother way around: This is the basis for the common phrase, "The present as history." We can only understand the present if we look back on it from the future, as history. But the "no recipes" statement warns us against empirical prediction; hence that future point can only be a hypothetical point: Rosa Luxemburg: The final goal not some vague vision of socialism but state power. (She, mistakingly, thought she had a Party, not knowing the future of the SPD. But the general point still holds.) The Old Man: (Reported in some MR page filler some years ago. A New York reporter interviewed Marx in the garden of his London home. At the end of the interview proper, the reporter paused and then asked: What is? Marx (after a pause so long the reporter though he had fallen asleep): Struggle. Not victorious struggle. Not a sham struggle embroidering predetermined history, but just: Struggle. No prediction of the outcome. No recipes. No sure-fire 'theory' of revolution. Just struggle. Carrol _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
