The Inside Assyria Discussion Forum #5

=> Re: Misadventures in the Class Struggle By Norman Finkelstein

Re: Misadventures in the Class Struggle By Norman Finkelstein
Posted by pancho (Moderator) - Thursday, January 2 2014, 13:06:38 (UTC)
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...much food for thought.....his humility and ability to expose himself, and gain by it, is admirable...I don't know why I never fell for revolutionary rhetoric....it was easy to see that most, if not all, such "radicals" either came from comfortable homes or would wind up wanting one...there was more of simple rebellion than revolution to them....a radical goes to the root of a problem, a rebel just fights it...the rebel remains tied to a stake, only he pulls and tugs and chews at the rope...a radical just cuts it and walks away....but he, or she, walks AWAY...he doesn't join another "movement"....

...I knew, at 25, that the last thing I wanted was to live in a "workers paradise"...the only people who were willing to submit to being ruled by workers were those who'd never worked with them....but, placing faith" in ANY human endeavor is just plain stupid...humans are human...there is very little of any kind of nobility when you get a bunch of them together...and who wants to "rule" anybody?

I think the Wizard of Oz still has one of the best commentaries on ALL such noble-sounding events as "freeing the people"....the scene where Toto pulls back the curtain and reveals the truth of ANY magician/politician tells it all...My Oz moment came when I realized that all sides, schools in Kuwait and American schools in Baghdad were trying to hustle me into their mold...I distrusted them all after that...I had peaked behind their covers and so the same manipulation, same techniques...just different slogans.

Of all such Gurus, Krishnamurti struck me as the most honest...when people flocked to him asking how to get on his path, he told them to do as he did..."go find your own path"....someone else's path isn't for you...he refused to actually guide anyone, except to point them AWAY from himself...you can trust a person who refuses to lead you to any promised land...anyone else, Right and Left, who claims to know is fooling at least one of you.

Revolutions aren't usually a beginning...they are merely a way of ending certain things that overstayed their welcome....the American Revolutionaries wanted "freedom", for white men...but still, it was a big deal...it was hardly perfect and anyone expecting perfection is a fool.

When people get pushed too far, they react...nothing "noble" about it...they just didn't want any more...doesn't lead to great insights, it isn't supposed to...it's just "ENOUGH"! Because the French Revolution ended with an Emperor, where there'd only been a King before, doesn't mean it failed...anyone who expected it to usher in a "New Dawn", was the failure.....Revolutions lead to murder and a change in power centers...that's all that can be legitimately expected of them...and in that regard, the Russian and Chinese revolutions were great successes....but the next day, after the Revolution, you had new leaders who came from a class of people who'd been suffering all those centuries past...and they are bound to carry that baggage around with them...it's too bad people wait too long to revolt...the population has to be almost half-crazed before it will make the big shift....too bad they can't be motivated while still half-sane....but they go beyond desperation to near derangement and in that state of mind you can't expect fair even-handedness, or justice...things they have never even experienced themselves.

So, Norman should indeed fault himself....but to turn on the Chinese Revolution because it didn't follow John Locke is, again, a blind spot....of COURSE it failed to live up to its rhetoric! Who actually thinks they ever do?



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