Re: Transformation from War to Peace

        The subject at hand is "transformation from war to peace,"
transformation from millennia of exploitation, cycles of hegemony, and
state-sponsored slaughter to millennia of justice, equality, freedom, and
peace.  Such a transformation would be the greatest event in human history
since the invention of civilization by Sumerians, Egyptians, and the
pre-Aryan peoples of the Indus River Valley.  I think "revolution" is not
too strong a term to apply.  It is also sufficiently broad to accommodate
many imaginable strategies, deployed over a period of months, years, or
decades, and varying from place to place and circumstance to circumstance.

        As for the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 and the "communism" of
the Stalin era, obviously these are not prototypes of anything I have in
mind, as I'm sure Jay and Elson well know.  The "spark" struck by Lenin
might conceivably have ignited the real thing, but with hindsight we
realize that he arrived at least a full century before his time.  As loyal
stepchildren of Hegel, let us remember Lenin and Trotsky--at their best--
in the same breath with Thomas Munzer, Gerrard Winstanley, Gracchus
Babeuf, and Louis Blanqui, heralds but not makers of the future.  To every
thing there is a season.

        Warren


On Wed, 16 Apr 2003, Jay Fenello wrote:

>
>
> At 4/15/2003  07:23 PM, wwagar@binghamton.edu wrote:
> >         All we need is the Revolution.
>
>
> Do we really need another revolution?
>
> Won't that just result in another hierarchy,
> with different people at the top?
>
> Jay.
>
>
> At 4/15/2003  07:23 PM, wwagar@binghamton.edu wrote:
>
> >         To put this thread in a Marxian context, I think we need to bear
> >in mind the following:
> >
> >         1.  The future achievement of a communist society will, in great
> >measure, restore the organicity and egalitarianism of prehistoric
> >communism, as exemplified by the lives of many indigenous North Americans
> >before the European conquest.  Indigenous peoples of the Caribbean and
> >parts of Central and South America also practiced primitive communism, but
> >in the case of pre-Columbian imperial Peru, Mexico, and the realm of the
> >Mayans, the exploitative institutions of early "civilization" had already
> >been independently invented, enabling Spanish Conquistadores to take the
> >place of the indigenous power elites and continue the exploitation of
> >peasant masses without missing a beat.  Recall the great influence of the
> >work of the American anthropologist Lewis Henry Morgan, an honorary member
> >of the Seneca Nation, on Friedrich Engels in his classic study, THE ORIGIN
> >OF THE FAMILY.
> >
> >         2.  All early, middle, and late "civilizations" in all parts of
> >the world during the past 6,000 years have exploited rural and urban
> >masses mercilessly, enabling their elites to amass immense wealth and
> >almost total political control, whatever the specific system of social
> >relations of production.  To single out the "West" as the center of this
> >evil is historically preposterous.  To discriminate among emperors,
> >shoguns, maharajahs, sultans, tsars, and presidents of republics is
> >historically preposterous.  Late 19th- and 20th-Century Western power
> >elites have been shrewd enough to allow subtantial crumbs from their
> >tables to reach the middling ranks of their own populations, tempering
> >discontent almost entirely at the expense of the laboring poor of
> >neo-colonized non-Western societies, but the name of the game is
> >unchanged.  The game in all such civilizations, no matter which religious
> >narcotic is peddled by the elites, no matter whether the underdogs are
> >called slaves, serfs, or proletarians, is simple:  return to the masses
> >enough of the value of their labor to keep them alive and tolerably
> >content and able to reproduce, and keep the rest for our exalted selves.
> >
> >         3.  The single greatest change over the past couple of hundred
> >years has been the application of empirical science and rationality by
> >selected Western countries and Asian emulators to increase manyfold the
> >total wealth of nations, allowing more crumbs to fall from certain tables,
> >allowing the Western innovators and Asian emulators to incorporate the
> >whole planet into their world-system, and, for example, allowing smug
> >privileged assholes from Texas to take possession of various ancient
> >Middle Eastern countries at gun-point.
> >
> >         4.  The state of pure communism envisaged by Marx and Engels is
> >not a return to the Iroquois Confederacy, but a wholly new world order
> >wrested from the power elites of "civilization" by the working people of
> >all nations.  It will restore the organicity and egalitarianism of
> >prehistory, but at a new and higher level of mastery of the forces of
> >nature through the enlightened application of empirical science and
> >rationality.  Many of the essential elements of that higher science and
> >rationality were discovered long before the rise of the modern Eurocentric
> >world-system, discovered by scientists and philosophers of the ancient
> >Egyptian, Greek, Arab, Chinese, Indian, and other civilizations.
> >Europeans and their American offspring merely carried their work forward
> >to its logical conclusion.  The fact that the latest gang of usurpers, who
> >happen to be mostly Westerners, harnessed some of the fruits of their
> >labors to give us Auschwitz, Hiroshima, the Gulag, the Pentagon, and the
> >RAND Corporation does not invalidate science and rationality.  We have the
> >tools now, thanks to the progress of science and rationality, to create a
> >global paradise preserving the biosphere, safeguarding everyone from
> >the wrath of nature, distributing all wealth equitably, and entrusting
> >planetary governance to the free choice of all women and men everywhere.
> >We can all live to the century mark in peace and well-being.  The means
> >are ready at hand.
> >
> >         All we need is the Revolution.
> >
> >         Warren
>
>
> +++
>
> Jay Fenello, Internet Services
> http://www.Fenello.com ... 678-585-9765
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> ---------------------------------------------------------
> "Our enemies are never as bad as we make them out to be,
> and we are never as good as we think" - Hans Morgenthau
>
>