Re: [Marxism] Getting dissolved or dissolving?

["acpollack2@xxxxxxxx" <acpollack2@xxxxxxxx>]

Which is why I always liked the version of the Internationale that says "the 
Internationale will be the human race"!
Very well put, Nestor -- assuming people understand the complex stages through 
which this process happens and that even in a revolutionary period there are 
multiple, concentric levels of consciousness, albeit rapidly changing and 
expanding in their membership.

-- "Nestor Gorojovsky" <nestorgoro@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
The debate on whether Trotskyists should "dissolve" can -and should-
be predicated on the whole of the movement.

Though Reformists have diminished the importance of Gramsci's
positions re: cultural hegemony, fact is however that when the social
necessities make it urgent to rethink political action in order to
revolutionize the social relations of production, then there are
enormous chances that Marxism, Trotskyism, etc., become "common
sense".

This does not arise in a "natural" manner, of course.  Marxism must
be understood as the critical assessment that a capitalist society
makes of itself, thus discovering its limits and the bounds that it
inevitably puts to the realization of the very same Great Ideals in
the name of which it was established.  And this is precisely it can
_never_ appear as a "normal" form of mind: mainstream ideas, vulgar
"sense",  _cannot_ be counter-functional to the general operation of
the social formation.

Thus, a radical thought must be prepared by a long work, which many
might consider sectarian (and can _be_ sectarian in a social sense,
during all the time when "reality does not call for the idea" --but
someone must keep the idea alive).  This way, even at the historical
moment when the social formation is receptive to radical positions,
_someone_ must express them, and this _someone_ can't but _well out
from that past, "sectarian" struggle_, so to say.

The above said, however, it is safe to conclude that the actual
victory of a seriously revolutionary ideology takes place when its
structures of thought and categories become "common sense", thus
necessarily "dissolving" into the totality and becoming
undistinguishable of the general state of mind of the majority of the
community (since one supposses that the exploited _are_ the
majority).  This means that Marxists dissolve as such within the mass
of the population and their mind simply becomes the "general state of
mind".  Instead of learning "Marxism", students will learn History,
Philosophy, etc. written by "Marxists" who won't need to call
themselves Marxists any more than Kantians or Positivists need to
_realize_ that they are Kantians in current society.

There is a single danger here, that radicals dissolve _their_ own
mind in the mainstream, ths reformist, stream of vulgar common sense.
But during revolutionary times, their becoming "normal members" of
society may well be heralded by their "dissolution" as a distinct
"sect" within a larger compact.  In a sense, this forms part of the
ABC of truly radical politics.

Néstor Miguel Gorojovsky
nestorgoro@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
"Sí, una sola debe ser la patria de los sudamericanos".
Simón Bolívar al gobierno secesionista y disgregador de
Buenos Aires, 1822
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