[OPE-L] Crashes, Panics, and Expectations

[Jurriaan Bendien <adsl675281@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Oops, I forgot to note of course that Lenin wrote about the "omnipotence" of
Marxism also under conditions of a brutal world war (and police repression),
and there's nothing like a military war to drive men to extremes, or make
them cling to something which provides a hope, confidence or faith where
it's needed. One has to read these old writings in context, obviously. But
the concept of an "integral world outlook" that had to be hammered into
people to vanquish "every form of superstition, reaction, or defence of
bourgeois oppression" continued in the Stalin era, as part of the
modernization ideology, and I don't think on balance that it had very good
results, insofar as it squashed independent thinking. I remain convinced
Marx & Engels almost always used the concept of ideology as a critical
concept, or in the sense perhaps of a sociological generalisation, and so
this idea of enforcing ideological conformity politically ("thinking the
party line", even in the most trivial issues) would have been alien to them
(cf. Marx & Engels's own stance in the First & Second Internationals). You
can of course argue, that a measure of ideology is inevitable in real
politics, but it's another thing to promote that rigorously as a monolithic
policy.

Jurriaan

She talks like thunder,
She really lets you know,
She keep changing the rules,
And leave you nowhere to go.
She bore you rigid,
With the party line,
She's so far left,
She's gonna get left behind.
He wants six pretty white spots,
On each side of the dice,
He wants it all to be equal,
but he needs to throw twice.
Now there's a guy in the corner,
With a smiling gaze
He turns to me, and says:
I'm gonna buy a hat,
'Cos I think it's gonna rain,
Got caught out coming here,
Ain't gonna get caught again.
I'm gonna buy a big one,
Like that Mr Gorbachov,
And when it's raining all this crap,
Oh, my hat will keep it off.
Now take a look at all them leaders,
Desperation in their eyes,
The tight faces, smiles that cannot hide it,
They know no more than you or I.
So I'm gonna buy a hat,
'Cos here they come again,
And when they start to blah-blah,
It's you and me that gets the rain.