That is a good point. In our culture we see so often the glorification of icons like Che amongst the youth, many of whom take up wearing his image on their T-shirts without a clue of who he was. But I think that a lot of us are dedicated to these ideals for more than just their 'cool' factor (if there is any). We can see that there are huge problems in society - opposing these is not really about 'coolosity' it is about necessity. If we, the coming generation, cannot care for the problems of our world then who is going to? I really hope that the revolutionary ideals stay with us and grow during our own personal growth.

I too fear what you fear, but there is more on the positive side in my mind than on the negative.

You have certainly given something to ponder.

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"I am the Prophet, I the Messiah; I am the Rose, and I am Elijah."

I do hope you are right.

But remember that our parents were carrying the Carnation Revolution in Portugal. Or supporting (and dying with) the government of Salvador Allende in Chile. Or, in my case, they were trying to free this country from a fascist dictatorship, and eventually succeeding (with an arguable merit: the dictator died of age).

Our grandparents fought in World War II. Or in the Cuban Revolution. Or, in my case, in the Spanish Civil War (a brother of my grandfather was killed because he was socialist. Other had to escape to the exile).

Our grand-grandparents may very well have been revolutionaries in Russia, or in Germany, or in France...

Five or six generations back, and we are riding the end of the XIX century, and they could have been in the Paris Commune. One more, and they could have been friends with Marx or Engels.

I am not trying to make any point -- I am just exposing things. All these people fought and died for their beliefs. The anarchists of the Spanish Revolution were more organized and more communist than most communists I know nowadays. They took things seriously, because they knew their life went into them.

We, however, have settled into a confortable world where our 'revolutionary' actions consist in attending to demonstrations, speeches, and bragging with our friends -- little else (with a few honorable exceptions, such as our comrade *Lividia and others like her, though I fear that they are too few to have an impact). There is no political structure Our parties have virtually no representation becaue they have virtually no support. Our ideologies should be widely embraced by the masses! But they don't.

We are doing something wrong, definitely. And I have a couple of ideas about it which I may write down someday (the main point is simple: socialdemocracy has had too much of a success). But I don't really see how to come out of this dead end -- I'm placing my hopes in the masses, as ever. I half hope, half fear, that what we have seen in France lately will only be the beginning. We are going to see more and more masses of hungry immigrants, illegalized, prosecuted, untermenner -- the new proletariat. We are going to see them invading our holy and blissful paradise of happy consumerism and conformity with the system. Because what the european socialdemocracies didn't understand is that, paraphrasing Trotsky, prosperity will be worldwide, or it won't be.

However, these masses are uneducated. The average worker in the early XX century had notions of what communism (or anarchism) was. They were more politized than we (and I am talking to ourselves, this supposed revolutionary vanguard) are. But these new proletaries, they have nothing (or, in the worst cases, they have an integrist religion). They are disorganized. They don't have a grasping of the political situation of the countries they migrate to. And they are totally alienated by the theoretically leftish parties, which at best treat them in third person, as if they were not there (of course -- they are not voters, so they don't interest directly, bue they do as a third-factor with which electors have to deal. Even elections are bought, in the end -- only with votes, instead of money).

I am just being terribly pessimistic, and I don't want to translate my pessimism to you or anyone. I don't want to indulge in self-pity either, so I am going to stop here. I just hope we manage to figure something out in the end.

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I feel compelled to reply. It's DeviantART comment engine's fault, not mine.

I do think that I'll always stay revolutionary in the sense that I'll always know how things should be done. Concerning activism, I don't think I'll have much time for it once I'll have a decent job and more stuff to do. But it all depends on circumstances, whether or not the Bolivarian Movement will be successful, whether or not more people get to be conscious, whether or not there were to be some crisis, etc.

A minor suggestion about the picture: you should either make it with normal latin fonts or do it completely with cyrillic, cause it messed me up when I started to read it :S (Here's the text in full cyrillic [phonetically converted]: ВИЛЛ Ю БИ РЭВОЛУШИОНАРИ ВЭП Ю ГРОВ АП ?)


By the way did you read all the anarcom stuff I sent you?

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Soyez réalistes, demandez l'impossible.

*I left "still" out: СТИЛЛ

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Soyez réalistes, demandez l'impossible.

In the end I'm sure common sense will prevail! The main problem is that our society dolls capitalism up to look like such a great thing that many people just don't question it. But in essence it is still the same bullshit we had when Marx was writing. I am encouraged by many of our youth today (especially my friends on the Scottish Socialist Youth forum) who have such passion for change. You are right that the masses that are needed for revolution are uneducated, and I think that is one of the biggest challenges for communism to overcome on the way to the revolution. If we look to history we can see that there were revolutions, that they did change things, but they then went on to become corrupted in most cases. In future we have to make sure that the next revolutions leave the power in the hands of the masses. I think a revolution is coming sometime in the reasonably near future. Some sort of backlash must happen against all the bourgeousie bullcrap thats going on right now.

Or maybe this is all a fad to me. I fear that as you do, but it certainly feels more. Some things are fundamentally important, and the survival of humanity is one of them. Lets hope these capitalists learn that lesson, and that those who have already learned don't forget or become disillusioned.

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"I am the Prophet, I the Messiah; I am the Rose, and I am Elijah."

I was exactly pointing towards that one first asessment. Work, and that thing called 'the real world' will have a deep impact in us. We may find out that, once we have settled into not-so-comfortable jobs, and gotten nicely endebted to buy a flat and a car -- then, perhaps, our revolutionary ideals will not seem as appealing.

Or perhaps they will. It is mostly idle thinking on my part, and not very productive.

P.S.: What anarcom stuff? I didn't receive any mail for you, though you indeed told me that you'd sent something.

P.P.S.: I do know how to write in cyrillic -- but I wanted, deliberately, to write in mock-cyrillic characters, to mimick that 'revolutionary fashion' that is becoming widespread everywhere.

However -- wouldn't a more appropiate phonetic translation of "GROW" be "ГРОУ"?

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I feel compelled to reply. It's DeviantART comment engine's fault, not mine.

It's a deep thought.

I'm wondering, though: do true revolutionaries see themselves as revolutionaries? Most of them are fighting obvious problems with an equally obvious solution, from their perspective. It's certainly a struggle, but it's only radical to people on the outside looking in.

HJ Hornbeck

I do think they are.

Because 'revolutionary' does not mean 'original' or 'new' (though it can be both). It means 'radically different', 'completely opposite' or 'the other way around'. In a more personal sense, I'd say it means a willing, conscious, joint and decisive action towards a well-defined goal. Revolutionaries are conscious they are carrying a revolution -- that is one of the things that differentiates them from reformists, along with the will to do it.

But perhaps I have a skewed view on what a revolution is.

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I feel compelled to reply. It's DeviantART comment engine's fault, not mine.

Perhaps we both do. One of the joys of debates.

HJ Hornbeck