Re: The New Panglossianism and Baby's bathwater (fwd)

> It is stated that:
> "... violent seizure of the state as "revolution" to
> create socialism in one country is an outmoded paradigm.  It failed. 
> It is
> defunct.  With the exception of a few orthodox Marxists with blinders
> on,
> people will not rally around any organization that takes violence or
> revolution, or violent revolution, as a guiding principle."
I think October 1917 was not a failure. The vulgar Marxist presumption
that abolishing private property eliinated classes once and for all was
"the failure". The show trials of the 1930s against worthy revolutionaries
was "the faliure". Suppression of freedom of thought and reduction of Marxism
to official dogma was "the failure." Personality cult was "the falure."
Were all these developments the necessary outcome of the way the
Bolsheviks took power in 1917?   I think not. A similar question
could be posed in relation to the Chinese Revolution.
    But this violence issue is not worth spending so
much time on, on this network. At a time when the ideology of liberal capitalism
reigns triumphant and holds sway over masses through its overwhelming control
over the media and cultural life, I think we should be discussing how to
stop the paralyzing ideological and cultural hegemony of the adversary.
This requires enhancing our understanding the workings of the system (information
gathering, empirical and theoretical work),  and increasing international
coordination between progressive national movements, especially in the
area of diffusing information and ideas.  I, a citizen of the Third
World, benefit very much from work done in the core countries to expose
the dealings of TNCs, of core governments, and of "international" organizations
such as the WTO  (information given by groups such as MAI-not etc.)
and theoretical work by world-system writers.
    This cooperation is what we should be discussing,
and  not the specifics of methods of struggle which are contingent
on the social-political environment.
Respectfully,
Cem Somel
Dep of Economics
Middle East technical University
 
 
>  
>