January 25, 2006: Self-defense
In refusing to advocate revolutionary violence, I'm not arguing that a popular movement, under any moniker socialist or whatever, should refuse to use violence in self-defense. I don't necessarily think it's the greatest idea since the other side has so much more violence available. But anyway I'm not taking a principled pacifist position. Instead, I'm trying to get after two very focused, specific things:
1. I believe it's irresponsible to advocate revolutionary violence in a nuclear-armed country; and
2. Nobody that I know of has ever theorized the fact that civil wars are inevitable and thus have significant practical impact on the withering away of the state.
Comments
A revolution is when the masses take the world into their own hands. It is a collective leap out of the old way of looking at the world into a new one, something like the active embodiment of the epistemological break, thinking for everybody. If we separate the revolution, from the civil war, it is precisely to emphasize the active, democratic moment. It is a strategic attempt to minimize violence and maximize persuasion. The bomb is not effective as an internal mechanism of terror, it is ment for an external population, they cannot drop it on themselves. We might call it the long revolution since it will take a series of mass radicalizations and practical changes in the way we organize life.
Posted by: Wayne Rothschild | January 26, 2006 04:44 PM
Whether or not that definition of "revolution" is true, it's not Marxist. Marx defined "revolution" as destruction of the state. I don't follow how this view of "the long revolution" is different in practice from Bernsteinism, in which case, what purpose does the word "revolution" serve?
I'm trying to get after something different here. Which isn't to say I'm doing a good job of it.
Posted by: Mark Phillips | April 29, 2006 12:45 PM