Re: relevance

[Carrol Cox <cbcox@xxxxxxxxx>]

Doug Henwood wrote:
>
> Michael Perelman wrote:
>
> >I don't see biotechnology creating a wave of enthusiasm
> >comparable to the Internet.
>
> But, to be fair, you probably wouldn't have seen the wave of
> enthusiasm about the Internet either. Not that anyone could, but
> betting against things for capital to enthuse about is generally a
> losing position.
>

"No introduction to a book on dialectics written in the last days of
1991 can ignore the implications of the revolution in Eastern Europe for
the validity of Marx's approach. Many writers, of course, have
interpreted these events as the demise not only of particular regimes
and forms of social organization but of the Marxist world view to which,
at least verbally, their leaders seemed so attached. . . .I would just
like to point out that he most striking feature of all the social
explosions of the past few years . . .is just how unexpected they were.
What existed before, however one evaluated it, was taken as given and
unchanging; just as most people treat the situat ion that has emerged as
a new given and equally unchanging. It is the same mistake that was made
in 1789, again in 1848, and again in 1917. These revolutions, too,
surprised almost everyone, and as soon as they happened almost everyone
alive at the time thought -- wrongly -- that they were over." Bertell
Ollman, _Dialectical Investigations_ (Routledge, 1993), p. 3.

I completely agree that the conditions Michael names (and others one
could add to the list), separately or in combination, do not definitely
or even probably represent any threat to capitalism. Capitalism could
easily overcome a dozen more equally forbidding threats. Life for 90% of
the population in the first world might become as miserable as it is for
the "third world" but capitalism could survive that.

It is equally foolish to say that because we can't write a scenario
there will be no revolutions in the future.

Carrol

"If you don't hit it, it won't fall." Mao