Sleeping In An Age Of Waiting
Okay, so it’s obvious that the Deluded Socialists are a bit odd. I mean look at their names for starters (P. Traven, D.S. Burton, P. S. Burton, Ben Illin, et al). What’s with the Burton twins? I can’t believe they’re married – after all that’s hardly revolutionary – but I’d lay odds that they’ve both adopted “Socialist” as a middle name. Shame they’re named after a gentleman’s clothing outlet, though.
But what is striking is just that they are extraordinarily boring. Now, it’s a truth almost universally acknowledged that there isn’t going to be a socialist revolution any time soon (well, at all, really). And sure, Marxist theory is pretty much a joke – and hell, I’ve read an awful lot of the stuff (that’s the problem with a doctorate in political sociology). But really one does hold out the hope that if you’re going to have a revolution – albeit that you’re not – it will be just a little bit exciting. Unfortunately, if this particular vanguard are anything to go by, it’s a false hope. It’ll be the only revolution in history where the masses are fast asleep before the first shot is fired.
By the way, Portentous Socialists, if you’ve got a minute in between the busy waiting, you may want to remove the Butterflies and Wheels link from your main site as well. Why limit your irrationality to your blog? Oh you don’t…
What makes it even dafter is that Ben Illin is presumably a pseudonym anyway. “Benilyn” is a common over-the-counter cough linctus in this neck of the woods and I can’t imagine any parent called Illin being vicious enough to call their kid Ben (though if they did I would have to reconsider my position on capital punishment). Mind you, it might explain his generally misanthropic outlook.
One of the things I’ve always welcomed in B&W has been it’s lack of much ad hominem carping or moaning about other sites or bloggers. Plenty of robust criticism and argument but usually about the topic at hand not those discussing it.
Sad to see this lapse.
Well I’ve always thought we should have more ad hominem carping, but Ophelia is much too nice and much too sensible!
But isn’t there a difference between the violence of suppressing counter-revolutionary elements in a popular revolution with the masses behind you and the revolutionary vanguard seizing power when they don’t have the support of the people – the former being an unfortunate necessity the latter being a pointless bloodbath…?
As I was saying in 1872, “Have these gentlemen ever seen a revolution? A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is; it is the act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets and cannon —
authoritarian means, if such there be at all; and if the victorious party
does not want to have fought in vain, it must maintain this rule by means
of the terror which its arms inspire in the reactionists.”
“Would the Paris Commune have lasted a single day if it had not made use of this authority of the armed people against the bourgeois? Should we not, on the contrary, reproach it for not having used it freely enough?”
Can’t say I’m an expert on the Paris Commune, but two cheers for Engels. And to think he went on to feature in “Little House on the Prairie”…
Dang – I go to sleep for five minutes and people go all silly around here.
Nice that Engels and Marx had such good show-biz success, isn’t it, what with ‘Little House’ and all those fraternal jokes.
‘I shot a lion in my pyjamas.’
‘What was a lion doing in your pyjamas?’
Etc.
This site has now lost a reader.
The attacks on SIAW are unworthy.
goodbye.
Oh no! A reader lost! That only leaves us some fifty thousand or so. What a shame.
True about the attacks though. Very wrong and unworthy. There SiAW was, minding its own business, gentle as a lamb, polite as a biscuit, not saying a word about B&W – not, in fact, posting pages and pages of highly personal vituperative inaccurate attacks simply because they disagree with the substance of what I say – when we suddenly pounce for no reason. It’s shocking.
I always love hearing from Disgustedoftunbridgewells though. Makes my day.
P. Traven is obviously a play on B. Traven:
Who was B. Traven?