[Marxism] The right modal verb (re: Lula & polls)

["Nestor Gorojovsky" <nestorgoro@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Carlos Rebello quotes Walter Lippman on Alarcón:

«"the most important task for the Latin American left" is to reelect
President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in Brazil".»

And then adds:

«It's not that the Latin American Left MUST reelect Lula, it's only 
that the only thing the Latin American Left CAN do is to reelect 
Lula, as all alternatives to him are worse off.»

Me:

"Consciousness of duty is the highest form of freedom", or words to 
that effect, make the core to Hegel's (and Marx's) idea of freedom.

The duty is twofold, however.  The duty -and on this the right 
concrete steps to be taken make up for much of the tastelessness of 
the Lula vote- is to _vote for Lula now_ and to _organize to offer a 
better possibility tomorrow BY having voted Lula now, not by NOT 
having voted Lula now_. I hope the subtle difference is clear.

Not easy, indeed.  But this is the dismal landscape that the dead 
generations of "leftists" and "Marxists"  in Latin America (the 
living dead, too) have brought us to:  at least two hundred million 
people teeming with revolutionary potential, and no Marxist (or 
Marxist-like) party that can honestly hope to represent at least a 
good fraction of them.

Thus, the struggle "for Marxism" and the struggle "for Revolution" 
seem to take parallel routes.  As some revealing street banner said 
on a recent mobilisation in Buenos Aires, conmemorating the 30th 
aniversary of the 1976 coup:  "Happy birthday, struggle!"

The holders of that banner were, most probably, under the deletereous 
influence of these "leftists and Marxists" who have so much enlarged 
the gap between flesh-and-bones people and themselves that they (a) 
considered the "struggle" as a goal in itself, and (b) made the 
horrible 1976 the birthdate of the God -"struggle"- they worship.

Between that "Marxism" and revolution there is not only a gap.  They 
belong to utterly different worlds.

Este correo lo ha enviado
Néstor Miguel Gorojovsky
nestorgoro@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[No necesariamente es su autor]
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"La patria tiene que ser la dignidad arriba y el regocijo abajo".
Aparicio Saravia
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