Re: a violent revolution?

        There is no way to answer your question because there are just too
many imaginable scenarios involving too many different parts of the world 
over too many future years.  Never would I condone violence if it meant
suppressing the democratically empowered will of the people.  But violence
against despots, against megacorporate exploiters of working people,
against colonizers, against global crime syndicates...who can say when and
where violence might prove the only effective resort?  Without violence it
may have been impossible to liberate the North American colonies from
imperial Britain, the Jews from British Palestine, the French from the
ancien regime, the Russians from tsardom, the blacks of the Southern
United States from slavery, the Romanian masses from the tyranny of
Ceausescu, the Kosovars from Serbia, the Algerians from France, one could
go on and on.  Not all these revolutions turned out for "the best"
perhaps.  Some of them led to what was arguably even worse.  But that's
not the point.  Anyone who categorically rules out the use of violence to
achieve political objectives is not of this world.

        You ask about my personal "projects."  I am one of those core
intellectuals marginalized in recent posts.  My project is to teach my
students to the best of my ability, to empower them with relevant ideas
and knowledge, and to write and publish effectively on issues of
world-historical urgency.  Every year I come in daily contact with
hundreds of young people from all over the world.  They listen to me,
I listen to them, we exchange ideas and perspectives, and I think this
makes a difference.  I should add that my university is a state
institution that enrolls people of all classes, so I am not just preaching
to a privileged elite--although I continue to hope that the World Party
will find many recruits even in such elites.

        Warren Wagar


  On Mon, 22 Nov 1999, [iso-8859-1] João Paulo Dias wrote:

> At 16:57 19/11/99 -0500, wwagar@binghamton.edu wrote:
> >
> >
> >     Tanya is absolutely right.  I would only add that since we deplore
> >structural as well as direct violence, we should turn to violence in our
> >revolution as a last, not a first, resort.  The end justifies the means,
> >but it is irrational to proceed to the worst possible means without 
>having
> >exhausted--or at least tried--all the others.
> >
> >     Warren Wagar
> >
> To Warren Wagar
> 
> If you don't succeed, by all the "first" means, and if you fail to be
> undestood because it's not the will of people would you go to violent 
>means
> to reach your goals? Would you go to a violent revolution? In the name of
> whom? Against whom? Who would you invite to join you?
> Romantic views but with very practical and understandable objectives... I
> rather work on civical projects in the long-term... with specific targets
> without using violent means. I have the patience to wait and work on
> alternative ways of living and acting. Which projects are you inolved in,
> if I can ask?
> João Paulo Dias
> 
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>