From: Carrol Cox <[email protected]>
On 8/15/2011 7:49 PM, Sandwichman wrote: Fuck Marx. SANDWICHMAN will make the claim: capitalism WILL destroy itself in one or the other of two ways. Either it will discipline, organize and unify the working class to overthrow it OR it will thwart its own co-operative developmental logic in order to forestall revolution, which will result in progressive societal and environmental break down. Currently, it is doing a bang up job on the second track. ----- Isn't this very close to what Rosa Luxemburg argued? My interest in this debate (Marx or no Marx) is rejecting the Victorian confidence that every day in every way every thing is getting better and better. A variant of that is the proverb "A Journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step." That assumes (a) the pathway is set out and won't change and (b) the walker has a map of the path in her head. History is not like that. Things can really go irreparably smash. Carrol ^^^^ CB; What you say is true. Marx and Engels assert it briefly in the _Manifesto_ by noting that class struggles sometime end in the destruction of the contending classes ( as with Rome). However, there is also the possibility of a "happy ending", which is the one Marx and Engels prudently and maturely ( as opposed to dramatically and sensationally) want. So, they emphasize the positive possibility, and sketch or outline that outcome. The thing is to change the world - for the better ! I recall that one of the last pamphlets from the Breznev period in the Soviet Union was entitled _We are Optimists_. Marx also , in an essay on Liincoln and the US Civil War paraphrase's Hegel's aphorism that comedic logic is superior to tragic grandeloquent logic. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
