Re: [Marxism] Stalinism and Bakuninism
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Mark Lause (markala...@gmail.com) wrote on 2010-08-01 at 20:50:15 in about Re: [Marxism] Stalinism and Bakuninism: Anybody not proudly part of the tradition of the First International? Not knocking it, but how meaningful is that in terms of distinguishing people on the Left? As meaningful as calling oneself a marxist. cheers, Lüko Willms Frankfurt, Germany Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Stalinism and Bakuninism
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == There wasn't a revolution going on in S. Africa in the 1980s? I beg to differ. Nonetheless these unfortunate acts were a part of spontaneous mob violence driven by their bitter hatred of their dismal conditions of oppression, not acts directed from above. Thus, why not talk about the violence of the apartheid regime, something decidedly a matter of conscious policy? So, politically speaking in that context they are counter-revolutionary horror stories, part of the political media offensive of the Boers and their supporters to give them moral cover and shift the onus away from apartheid. Louis talked about not dredging up stuff from 10 years before he was born (and I say in my defense I'm not the one who brought this stuff up, I didn't start it), so surely we're treading on thin ice in getting into the Jacobins, but if you must raise this issue, I suggest those who are interested check out Thomas Paine's defense of the French Revolution, The Rights of Man, in response to precisely this argument when first raised by Edmund Burke over 200 years ago. And if you remember there was also a revolution in Haiti at that time. Are you now going to complacently ignore the reality of colonial slavery and talk about the murder of plantation families or of perhaps incidents of people killed by masses who rightly or wrongly thought to be collaborators? What about Sherman's March to the Sea? What about the partisans in France who killed people believed to be collaborators, but due to mistake weren't? Are we going to condemn them as terrorists as many right wing people in France and Germany still do to this day without talking about the Nazis? Give us a break. On Sun, Aug 1, 2010 at 7:00 PM, Shane Mage shm...@pipeline.com wrote: == Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == On Aug 1, 2010, at 8:20 PM, Tom Cod wrote: ...like I was saying that was a good thing. Obviously not...revolution and civil war are not perfect and...many unsavory things occur... Oh. You were talking about necklacing *suspected* informers in South Africa (where there was, in the proper sense of those words, neither a revolution nor a civil war going on) and described all references to such facts as right-wing horror stories. I took that as manifesting a certain, all-too-common, attitude toward the Robespierres and Jeffersons and their Revolutionary successors. Shane Mage Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Stalinism and Bakuninism
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == On Aug 2, 2010, at 9:49 AM, Tom Cod wrote: ...surely we're treading on thin ice in getting into the Jacobins, but if you must raise this issue, I suggest those who are interested check out Thomas Paine's defense of the French Revolution, The Rights of Man... And when you do, just remember that it was Thermidor which liberated Paine from the prison where he was about to be sent to the guillotine by Robespierre. Shane Mage Thunderbolt steers all things. Herakleitos of Ephesos, fr. 64 Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Stalinism and Bakuninism
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Yeah well, Michael Moore was on Larry King last night talking about how the lesson of the BP oil spill is that natural resources like oil, whether offshore or not, are a social resource and cannot be rightly viewed as the private property of anyone or any corporation? For what its worth, I lived through the Exxon Valdez oil spill as an Alaskan resident so this BP disaster is of definite concern to me. On Mon, Aug 2, 2010 at 6:57 AM, Louis Proyect l...@panix.com wrote: == I see that you still betray no interest in what is going on in 2010, a year of deepening environmental and economic crisis. I can tell you this much, that Tom Paine did not sit around discussing the writings of Thomas More. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Stalinism and Bakuninism (was: Earliest use of word Stalinism?)
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == No, no. I could understand the link with Bukharin. Nobody who has read Deutscher´s biographies can fail to do that, not to speak of Trotsky himself, etc. But Bakunin of all people. However, Lüko´s suggestion and explanation are heavily compelling, indeed. And in more respects than one it sheds light on current events in many places, BTW. 2010/8/1 DW dwalters...@gmail.com: I suspect that when Nestor first raised this he meant to say Bukharin not Bakunin. Bukharin was the first to raise the issue Socialism in one Country. I see that both the Bolshevik and Anarchist in question often get transposed with one another other. DAvid -- Néstor Gorojovsky El texto principal de este correo puede no ser de mi autoría Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Stalinism and Bakuninism (was: Earliest use of word Stalinism?)
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == On Sun, Aug 1, 2010 at 12:39 PM, Lüko Willms lueko.wil...@t-online.de wrote: I have long believed that Stalinism (particularly in its post-Khruschevian form) was some particular version of Social-Democracy, a Social-Democracy without a bourgeoisie to do the dirty task. They are both a petty-bourgeois current exploiting the working-class movement, but the social basis is different. The social basis of social-democracy is intimately tied in with their own bourgeoisie in that respective country, finding its primary social support in the trade-union burocracy and the municipal burocracy (this latter is the case at least in Germany). The other current, which we know as stalinism, is -- as you say -- not so intimately linked with its national bourgeoisie, and can act more independently of that. Consider the left turn in the late 1940ies of stalinist parties worldwide after the Kreml finally realised that the US empire was not good friend. It is in that period, that stalinists in Colombia started an armed struggle, that the revolutionists in China and Vietnam were encouraged to go on the offensive, and that time, when in Eastern Europe the burocratically deformed revolutions ended the direct capitalist rule in a number of countries. But this is quite original, for me! Why would you say that Stalinism roots in Bakunin? It is this program of a barracks communism (Kasernenhofkommunismus), as Marx called it in its critique of the Bakuninist split of the first International, the gangsterism of a petty bourgeois layer detached from a real unity with the working classes, the strong-arm tactics against political opponents and the mistrust against the working class as such which has to be commanded but not led, all this is first found in Bakunin and his followers, and could develop to a larger extent only after the foundations of a workers state brought about by the Russian Revolution provided such a layer a power base, on which same-minded groups in other countries could rely on. The horror of the Pol-Pot-Regime is another manifestation of that. Also think of the burning tires as neck laces to discipline Black workers by a stalinist wing of the ANC. This insight came me after reading Martín Koppel's pamphlet Peru's Shining Path - Anatomy of a reactionary sect, published in 1993 by Pathfinder Press (Spanish as Sendero Luminoso - Evolución de una secta estalinista in 1994 http://www.pathfinderpress.com/s.nl/it.A/id.599/.f). This Bakuninism is quite different from what we know as Anarchism today, in which individualism plays a central role, and where groups end up by all of them hanging out shingle or starting a business on their own. Saludos revolucionarios desde el viejo continente, Lüko Willms Frankfurt, Germany This has to be one of the most asinine things I have read on marxmail. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Stalinism and Bakuninism (was: Earliest use of word Stalinism?)
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Please, Greg, don´t hurry at conclusions. I, for one, _do_ understand the basic idea that the gangsterism of a petty bourgeois layer detached from a real unity with the working classes, the strong-arm tactics against political opponents and the mistrust against the working class as such which has to be commanded but not led, all this which according to Lüko (and IMHO not without strong reason) is first found in Bakunin and his followers, etc., nurtures strong stalinist tendencies (even though they don´t bear the name). I am portraying some of today´s politicians of the Left (even of my own generic current) who would fit that description and I would easily imagine leading a police state against (and at the same time on behalf of) the working class in the hypotesis of a workers state developing in Arg in the near future. This insight came me after reading Martín Koppel's pamphlet Peru's Shining Path - Anatomy of a reactionary sect, published in 1993 by Pathfinder Press (Spanish as Sendero Luminoso - Evolución de una secta estalinista in 1994 http://www.pathfinderpress.com/s.nl/it.A/id.599/.f). This Bakuninism is quite different from what we know as Anarchism today, in which individualism plays a central role, and where groups end up by all of them hanging out shingle or starting a business on their own. As to Sendero, their historic and political role (we are not talking about their idealist heroism) was as nefarious as anything can be. -- Néstor Gorojovsky El texto principal de este correo puede no ser de mi autoría Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Stalinism and Bakuninism
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Greg McDonald (gregm...@gmail.com) wrote on 2010-08-01 at 13:34:22 in about Re: [Marxism] Stalinism and Bakuninism (was: Earliest use of word Stalinism?): This has to be one of the most asinine things I have read on marxmail. Could you please give a political meaning to your zoological reaction? Cheers, Lüko Willms Frankfurt, Germany Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Stalinism and Bakuninism
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Tom Cod (tomc...@gmail.com) wrote on 2010-08-01 at 10:54:50 in about Re: [Marxism] Stalinism and Bakuninism (was: Earliest use of word Stalinism?): Trotsky deals with dead on in Their Morals and Ours in response to exactly these arguments regarding the Bolshevik Revolution and Civil War This is an excellent point of reference. Please allow me to quote the final section of this excellent article, which answers -- in general -- also your reference to an unidentified article by Trotsky on the struggle against fascism in Germany. Taken from http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1938/morals/morals.htm - cut Dialectic Interdependence of End and Means A means can be justified only by its end. But the end in its turn needs to be justified, From the Marxist point of view, which expresses the historical interests of the proletariat, the end is justified if it leads to increasing the power of man over nature and to the abolition of the power of man over man. We are to understand then that in achieving this end anything is permissible? sarcastically demands the Philistine, demonstrating that he understood nothing. That is permissible, we answer, which really leads to the liberation of mankind. Since this end can be achieved only through revolution, the liberating morality of the proletariat of necessity is endowed with a revolutionary character. It irreconcilably counteracts not only religious dogma but every kind of idealistic fetish, these philosophic gendarmes of the ruling class. It deduces a rule for conduct from the laws of the development of society, thus primarily from the class struggle, this law of all laws. Just the same, the moralist continues to insist, does it mean that in the class struggle against capitalists all means are permissible: lying, frame-up, betrayal, murder, and so on? Permissible and obligatory are those and only those means, we answer, which unite the revolutionary proletariat, fill their hearts with irreconcilable hostility to oppression, teach them contempt for official morality and its democratic echoers, imbue them with consciousness of their own historic mission, raise their courage and spirit of self-sacrifice in the struggle. Precisely from this it flows that not all means are permissible. When we say that the end justifies the means, then for us the conclusion follows that the great revolutionary end spurns those base means and ways which set one part of the working class against other parts, or attempt to make the masses happy without their participation; or lower the faith of the masses in themselves and their organization, replacing it by worship for the leaders. Primarily and irreconcilably, revolutionary morality rejects servility in relation to the bourgeoisie and haughtiness in relation to the toilers, that is, those characteristics in which petty bourgeois pedants and moralists are thoroughly steeped. These criteria do not, of course, give a ready answer to the question as to what is permissible and what is not permissible in each separate case. There can be no such automatic answers. Problems of revolutionary morality are fused with the problems of revolutionary strategy and tactics. The living experience of the movement under the clarification of theory provides the correct answer to these problems. Dialectic materialism does not know dualism between means and end. The end flows naturally from the historical movement. Organically the means are subordinated to the end. The immediate end becomes the means for a further end. In his play, Franz von Sickingen, Ferdinand Lassalle puts the following words into the mouth of one of the heroes: ... Show not the goal But show also the path. So closely interwoven Are path and goal that each with other Ever changes, and other paths forthwith Another goal set up. Lassalle's lines are not at all perfect. Still worse is the fact that in practical politics Lassalle himself diverged from the above expressed precept - it is sufficient to recall that he went as far as secret agreements with Bismark! But the dialectic interdependence between means and end is expressed entirely correctly in the above-quoted sentences. Seeds of wheat must be sown in order to yield an ear of wheat. Is individual terror, for example, permissible or impermissible from the point of view of pure morals? In this abstract form the question does not exist at all for us. Conservative Swiss bourgeois even now render official praise to the terrorist William Tell. Our sympathies are fully on the side of Irish, Russian, Polish or Hindu terrorists in their struggle against national and political oppression. The assassinated Kirov, a rude satrap
Re: [Marxism] Stalinism and Bakuninism
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == OK fine, so what's with the bullshit slanders of Bakunin and the ANC? Weren't their ends worthy ones: the liberation of the working class and the end of apartheid tyranny? Did they counterpose individual terror to mass struggle? Actually they didn't. And please don't imply that your views are one with those of Pathfinder and the SWP. As a former member of the same, I have my differences with them, but they were always stalwart upholders of the ANC who would in no way agree with your commentary regarding that. There were those who differed with that, but from the Left; not by sanctimoniously recycling right wing horror stories about the mistreatment of suspected informers. What was tarring and feathering like? it was more than G rated Disney pageantry with the Tory victim often dying. By doing that your tendency is to do to Trotsky what Lenin accused Kautsky of doing to Marx: turning him into an ordinary liberal philistine. Maybe in fairness I should chalk it up to naivete. On Sun, Aug 1, 2010 at 12:20 PM, Lüko Willms lueko.wil...@t-online.dewrote: Tom Cod (tomc...@gmail.com) wrote on 2010-08-01 at 10:54:50 in about Re: [Marxism] Stalinism and Bakuninism (was: Earliest use of word Stalinism?): Trotsky deals with dead on in Their Morals and Ours in response to exactly these arguments regarding the Bolshevik Revolution and Civil War This is an excellent point of reference. Please allow me to quote the final section of this excellent article, which answers -- in general -- also your reference to an unidentified article by Trotsky on the struggle against fascism in Germany. Taken from http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1938/morals/morals.htm - cut Dialectic Interdependence of End and Means A means can be justified only by its end. But the end in its turn needs to be justified, From the Marxist point of view, which expresses the historical interests of the proletariat, the end is justified if it leads to increasing the power of man over nature and to the abolition of the power of man over man. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Stalinism and Bakuninism
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == On Sun, Aug 1, 2010 at 2:25 PM, Lüko Willms lueko.wil...@t-online.de wrote: This has to be one of the most asinine things I have read on marxmail. Could you please give a political meaning to your zoological reaction? Luko, I think Tom is doing a fine job of conveying the political meaning of my reaction. I was pretty speechless, to be quite honest. I've never seen so many hackneyed judgments run together in a single train of thought before. Quite remarkable, really. Greg Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Stalinism and Bakuninism
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Thanks, one other thing before I have to split: as to Bakuninism, Joe Hill, Sacco Vanzetti and Emma Goldman and numerous others considered themselves part of this tradition. We can disagree with that, but to suggest they were common gangsters into foisting their tyranny on the workers is not only wrong and unfair, it plays into exactly those ruling class stereotypes that were used to victimize and frame-up these worthy activists. James P. Cannon, who later became a principal founder of the SWP, was actually inspired to name their newspaper The Militant based on a quote from Vanzetti, who responded to Cannon's rhetorical query, while on death row, about a worker who fell from a high storey window while in police custody to his death, whether the cops' story that he jumped was true. Oh no, responded Vanzetti, he was a good militant, he would never have done that. On Sun, Aug 1, 2010 at 1:15 PM, Greg McDonald gregm...@gmail.com wrote: == Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == On Sun, Aug 1, 2010 at 2:25 PM, Lüko Willms lueko.wil...@t-online.de wrote: This has to be one of the most asinine things I have read on marxmail. Could you please give a political meaning to your zoological reaction? Luko, I think Tom is doing a fine job of conveying the political meaning of my reaction. I was pretty speechless, to be quite honest. I've never seen so many hackneyed judgments run together in a single train of thought before. Quite remarkable, really. Greg Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Stalinism and Bakuninism
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == On Aug 1, 2010, at 4:09 PM, Tom Cod wrote: ...sanctimoniously recycling right wing horror stories about the mistreatment of suspected informers. What was tarring and feathering like? it was more than G rated Disney pageantry with the Tory victim often dying... Suspicion is not evidence, let alone proof. In that one word-- *suspected*--the devil's heel becomes visible. The Inquisition, citing vehement suspicion of heresy showed Galileo to its chamber of torture. The Robespierrist Terror, which decimated the French revolutionaries and led directly to Thermidor and Bonaparte (which found their historical justification in it), was legally based on the Law of Suspects. What if not suspicion was the justification for the enslavement and killing of millions during the Stalinchina? What if not suspicion does Obama cite to justify the imprisonment and torture of thousands at Guantanamo Bay, Bagram, and all the unnamed black sites? To cite the torture of Tory victims (members of the majority who stayed loyal to their legal government) by the slaveholder-led minority terrorists of the American Revolution is to promise similar actions (and on grounds of suspicion, not proof) in any future revolution that this writer and his cothinkers have anything to do with. A Leftist can do no better were he actually endeavoring to discredit the very idea of revolution. Shane Mage The communist creed: From each according to his ability, to each according to his need. The capitalist creed: From each according to his gullibility, to each according to his greed. Joe Stack (1956-2010) Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Stalinism and Bakuninism
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Tom Cod (tomc...@gmail.com) wrote on 2010-08-01 at 13:50:20 in about Re: [Marxism] Stalinism and Bakuninism: Thanks, one other thing before I have to split: as to Bakuninism, Joe Hill, Sacco Vanzetti and Emma Goldman and numerous others considered themselves part of this tradition. We can disagree with that, but to suggest they were common gangsters into foisting their tyranny on the workers is not only wrong and unfair, The only one identifying those fighters with the gangsterism of Bakunin, Stalin and Pol Pot is YOU. Nobody else has accused Joe Hill, Sacco Vanzetti or Emma Goldman of murdering co-workers who would not want to follow their orders. YOU are the one to make that amalgam, nobody else. What is your purpose with this lies? What do you want to achieve? Cover up what? Cheers, Lüko Willms Frankfurt, Germany Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Stalinism and Bakuninism
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Well they as anarchists were in fact proudly part of the tradition of the First International going back to Bakunin, as I recall the CNT was founded by his followers in Spain or those who identified with his faction of the International Workingmen's Association, an individual whom you so shamelessly identify as a terrorist and smear as being akin to Pol Pot without any evidence. When did Bakunin murder a co-worker or anybody? in that respect he differed from Trotsky, then again Trotsky was a military commander during a civil war. I don't know whether you are consciously spreading these right wing lies or whether you simply don't know what you're talking about. It is this program of a barracks communism (Kasernenhofkommunismus), as Marx called it in its critique of the Bakuninist split of the first International, the gangsterism of a petty bourgeois layer detached from a real unity with the working classes, the strong-arm tactics against political opponents and the mistrust against the working class as such which has to be commanded but not led, all this is first found in Bakunin and his followers, and could develop to a larger extent only after the foundations of a workers state brought about by the Russian Revolution provided such a layer a power base, on which same-minded groups in other countries could rely on. -Luko On Sun, Aug 1, 2010 at 3:20 PM, Lüko Willms lueko.wil...@t-online.dewrote: == Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Tom Cod (tomc...@gmail.com) wrote on 2010-08-01 at 13:50:20 in about Re: [Marxism] Stalinism and Bakuninism: Thanks, one other thing before I have to split: as to Bakuninism, Joe Hill, Sacco Vanzetti and Emma Goldman and numerous others considered themselves part of this tradition. We can disagree with that, but to suggest they were common gangsters into foisting their tyranny on the workers is not only wrong and unfair, The only one identifying those fighters with the gangsterism of Bakunin, Stalin and Pol Pot is YOU. Nobody else has accused Joe Hill, Sacco Vanzetti or Emma Goldman of murdering co-workers who would not want to follow their orders. YOU are the one to make that amalgam, nobody else. What is your purpose with this lies? What do you want to achieve? Cover up what? Cheers, Lüko Willms Frankfurt, Germany Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Stalinism and Bakuninism
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == I get a kick out of you Shane, like I was saying that was a good thing. Obviously not, but rather like Trotsky pointing out that revolution and civil war are not perfect and that many unsavory things occur on all sides therein and that sometimes there are broader world-historical issues at play to be analyzed in determining how to assess these events and their outcome besides condemning them all as bad people who did bad things who obviously had little difference between their sides from the standpoint of people of good will. Take the US Civil War for example. Obviously revolution is not your cup of tea, a view you are entitled to as due process of law is not something that is going to occur during the heat of those passions. On Sun, Aug 1, 2010 at 2:34 PM, Shane Mage shm...@pipeline.com wrote: On Aug 1, 2010, at 4:09 PM, Tom Cod wrote: ...sanctimoniously recycling right wing horror stories about the mistreatment of suspected informers. What was tarring and feathering like? it was more than G rated Disney pageantry with the Tory victim often dying... Suspicion is not evidence, let alone proof. In that one word-- *suspected*--the devil's heel becomes visible. The Inquisition, citing vehement suspicion of heresy Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Stalinism and Bakuninism
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Anybody not proudly part of the tradition of the First International? Not knocking it, but how meaningful is that in terms of distinguishing people on the Left? ML Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Stalinism and Bakuninism
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == On Aug 1, 2010, at 8:20 PM, Tom Cod wrote: ...like I was saying that was a good thing. Obviously not...revolution and civil war are not perfect and...many unsavory things occur... Oh. You were talking about necklacing *suspected* informers in South Africa (where there was, in the proper sense of those words, neither a revolution nor a civil war going on) and described all references to such facts as right-wing horror stories. I took that as manifesting a certain, all-too-common, attitude toward the Robespierres and Jeffersons and their Revolutionary successors. Shane Mage This cosmos did none of gods or men make, but it always was and is and shall be: an everlasting fire, kindling in measures and going out in measures. Herakleitos of Ephesos Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
