No subject

Reading Woods, I am reminded of why Marx insisted he was anything BUT a
"Marxist." Because, as is appropriate enough for a Woods, self-styled
Marxists are such BLOCKHEADS. 

We insist on imputing world-historic meaning to mostly meaningless efforts. 

We may not believe in God, but we will not be denied religion. 

IF one adheres to a strict Marxist-Engelsist dialectical and materialist
understanding of history, while it may not be given to us to understand it
in real time, it has to be true that almost certainly, historical outcomes
have little to do --VERY little to do-- with our individual efforts and
intentions. And that is true even of the most far-sighted. 

"Imperialism" as we know it COMPLETELY blind-sided Marx and Engels. Even in
the 1890's, Engels STILL didn't see it coming, and with it the complete
undoing of the growing worldwide solidarity of working people with which he
comforted himself in his last days. 

He died comforted by the thought, that if not this year, then the next, and
if not then, certainly within a very few more years, this growing world-wide
communist movement --even if it called itself merely "socialist" and
"democratic"-- would put an end to the capitalist era and begin the
transition to classless society.

But in the end the opportunist bourgeois-reformist "social democracy" label
proved truer than all the teachings of Marx and Engels and all the national
and international congresses with their splendid antiwar resolutions.

Had Engels understood THAT, I daresay the flamethrower would have been
perfected a couple of decades BEFORE World War I.

The key to understanding the underlying reasons for the massive betrayal of
the working class by social democracy, the second International, ENGELS's
international (as Lenin pointed out in his late 1916 article, Imperialism
and the split in Socialism) are all in Marx and Engels's comments and
analysis of Britain for nearly a half century. Lenin indirectly suggests
that there was no way for Engels to have known this, as modern imperialism
in the Leninist sense, as a fully-formed phenomenon, only emerged after his
death.

But if history absolves Engels because he died in 1895 and the first truly
modern imperialist war (the "Spanish-American War"), which revealed the
nature of the system, did not take place until three years later, 1898 ...
what are we to say of comrade Woods and all the other Popes of the various
and sundry churches of latter-day Leninism, who claim to have the ultimate
answer to the ultimate question about getting rid of capitalism EVEN IF it
takes place a hundred years from now and mass mobilizations are mustered
through science-fiction transporters that transform an Einsteinian
understanding of space-time into a toddler's delight, much like the
revolving doors and escalators of our day?

*  *  *

Something that strikes me as different between the typical Marxist critiques
of administrations like those of Lyndon Johnson, Nixon and Bush the lesser
and those of the more insightful liberals is that the liberals invariably
indict them for hubris.

Our side never does.

Something goes here about a mote and the obstacle to clear seeing
represented by a beam.

Joaquin