Hi Lorraine! Thanks for your thoughtful comment. That's so interesting about your experience in Spain. I wonder a lot what memorials to struggle can and should look like. Once they become official, are they watered down? Luxemburg is an interesting model to point to. I've been thinking a lot about this in terms of what more progressive teaching especially for younger kids and teens looks like - a lot of emphasis on non-violent struggles and even civil disobedience, which is great as far as it goes, but at some point you have to learn the history of these bloodier and more complicated struggles and I feel like even progressive education often struggles with that - there's an implicit kind of moralism, to say that the Russians or the French "betrayed" the revolution which isn't necessary or wholly wrong but a real answer - if we can acknowledge that a the Civil War or WWII were at a certain historical juncture the last and least bad way to defeat slavery or fascism, it seems you have to be able to have those conversations about revolutions - it seems like for most leftists those conversations often take place in sectarian contexts which don't make for the best conversations. I'm not sure how relevant this is to where we are now, where we still (for now) have some democratic means to resist fascism, and are maybe mostly failing to do so, but I do find my mind go there where you have political violence on one side and the other side's answer is "vote more"
Thanks for the comment! Let's find a time to have coffee in the neighborhood soon.
Laura, I found this entry very interesting. I think you are asking the right questions about how to evaluate the "ethics of revolution." As your teacher said, without understanding context it is impossible to judge. Yet we come back to the old philosophical problem, does the end justify the means? This is why I am such a big fan of Rosa Luxemburg. She understood that every revolution involved some form of violence. The ruling class does not give up its power without a fight, but for her this is only a phase, the real revolution is the restructuring of social relations. She believed that premature revolulutions, such as the Russian Revolution would face horrendous problems because the majority of the working class including the peasantry had not yet reached a level of class consciousness that would lead to a democratically elected leadership making policy. Of course she supported the revolution, and admired Lenin and the Bolshevik's willingness to seize power. Yet in the final analysis without creating the conditions for socialist democracy, the leadership would become a dictatorship, with a reliance on fear and coercion to implement it policies. Finally, I was very much struck when I went to Spain how lacking in monuments, historical markers, and museums on the Spanish Civil War. I may have been in the wrong cities or places, but I did not see anything. I hope to go to Chile where there is a museum on the military right wing coup that overthrew Salvador Allende.
Hi Lorraine! Thanks for your thoughtful comment. That's so interesting about your experience in Spain. I wonder a lot what memorials to struggle can and should look like. Once they become official, are they watered down? Luxemburg is an interesting model to point to. I've been thinking a lot about this in terms of what more progressive teaching especially for younger kids and teens looks like - a lot of emphasis on non-violent struggles and even civil disobedience, which is great as far as it goes, but at some point you have to learn the history of these bloodier and more complicated struggles and I feel like even progressive education often struggles with that - there's an implicit kind of moralism, to say that the Russians or the French "betrayed" the revolution which isn't necessary or wholly wrong but a real answer - if we can acknowledge that a the Civil War or WWII were at a certain historical juncture the last and least bad way to defeat slavery or fascism, it seems you have to be able to have those conversations about revolutions - it seems like for most leftists those conversations often take place in sectarian contexts which don't make for the best conversations. I'm not sure how relevant this is to where we are now, where we still (for now) have some democratic means to resist fascism, and are maybe mostly failing to do so, but I do find my mind go there where you have political violence on one side and the other side's answer is "vote more"
Thanks for the comment! Let's find a time to have coffee in the neighborhood soon.
Laura, I found this entry very interesting. I think you are asking the right questions about how to evaluate the "ethics of revolution." As your teacher said, without understanding context it is impossible to judge. Yet we come back to the old philosophical problem, does the end justify the means? This is why I am such a big fan of Rosa Luxemburg. She understood that every revolution involved some form of violence. The ruling class does not give up its power without a fight, but for her this is only a phase, the real revolution is the restructuring of social relations. She believed that premature revolulutions, such as the Russian Revolution would face horrendous problems because the majority of the working class including the peasantry had not yet reached a level of class consciousness that would lead to a democratically elected leadership making policy. Of course she supported the revolution, and admired Lenin and the Bolshevik's willingness to seize power. Yet in the final analysis without creating the conditions for socialist democracy, the leadership would become a dictatorship, with a reliance on fear and coercion to implement it policies. Finally, I was very much struck when I went to Spain how lacking in monuments, historical markers, and museums on the Spanish Civil War. I may have been in the wrong cities or places, but I did not see anything. I hope to go to Chile where there is a museum on the military right wing coup that overthrew Salvador Allende.