Re: patience

[Daniel Davies <dsquared@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I seem to remember that around the time of the Seattle riots, Doug said
something which always struck me as very right, along the lines of what is a
"moderate" demand being dependent on what demands are actually being made.
The idea being that moderate demands only succeed in cases when there is
also a lunatic fringe making "unreasonable" demands; if the lunatic fringe
isn't there, then the moderates get redefined as the lunatic fringe.

dd

-----Original Message-----
From: PEN-L list [mailto:PEN-L@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of michael a.
lebowitz
Sent: 17 August 2004 21:52
To: PEN-L@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: patience


At 14:27 17/08/2004, Carrol wrote:

>I would agree. In fact, in any given locality, most of the actual troops
>think in terms of "moderate" demands. One can't attack them. We are back
>to Lenin's "patience, patience, and patience" as the three revolutionary
>virtues. (My source for the quote a friend back in the '60s; I don't
>know when or where Lenin said it, if he did. But it's still good
>revolutionary advice, whether Lenin said it or not.)
>
>Carrol

Agreed--- but the way I heard it was that the two virtues of a
revolutionary (or Bolshevik) were patience and a sense of irony; however,
I've never been able to locate the source (even when using patience, a
sense of irony and google).
         cheers,
          michael


Michael A. Lebowitz
Professor Emeritus
Economics Department
Simon Fraser University
Burnaby, B.C., Canada V5A 1S6

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