Jimmie Higgins
31st July 2012, 17:44
Post from RevLeft 100 years ago...
Dear Sirs,
I am writing this post with the determination to persuade fellow revolutionists on the paramount importance of new technological devices and their relationship to the question of the nature of Capital. New innovations have been developed and implemented to such an extent in recent decades that we must countenance the possibility that the theories developed by Mr. Marx and Mr. Engels in conjunction with other esteemed comrades of the past generation have been rendered obsolete. If the Cooperative Commonwealth is to be established in our lifetime I daresay that it will come as a result of these innovations which inherently undermine the power of the ruling class over society. I ask what good will come from struggles of the rail laborers when surely in a number of years transportation will be handeled by fleets of great air-going vessels and blimps? Why must we concern ourselves with the questions of the yellow press when soon each individual will individually link to other induviduals by telephone? Why fight for the ability to soapbox when whole electronic Salons for political debate can be networked over radio waves? Surely this is a decidedly different era of rapid achievement and invention: does this epoch not then require a new theory of the attainment of socialism?
I read a bill-post today that informed me of a case of a local Italian immigrant who had been bludgeoned by members of the police. A crowd of workers formed around the posting and we all became so thoroughly enraged that two applecart were upended and a barrel was thrown to the side of the road. Subsequently we marched through town chanting, "Damn the Police!"
Dear Sirs,
I am writing this post with the determination to persuade fellow revolutionists on the paramount importance of new technological devices and their relationship to the question of the nature of Capital. New innovations have been developed and implemented to such an extent in recent decades that we must countenance the possibility that the theories developed by Mr. Marx and Mr. Engels in conjunction with other esteemed comrades of the past generation have been rendered obsolete. If the Cooperative Commonwealth is to be established in our lifetime I daresay that it will come as a result of these innovations which inherently undermine the power of the ruling class over society. I ask what good will come from struggles of the rail laborers when surely in a number of years transportation will be handeled by fleets of great air-going vessels and blimps? Why must we concern ourselves with the questions of the yellow press when soon each individual will individually link to other induviduals by telephone? Why fight for the ability to soapbox when whole electronic Salons for political debate can be networked over radio waves? Surely this is a decidedly different era of rapid achievement and invention: does this epoch not then require a new theory of the attainment of socialism?
I read a bill-post today that informed me of a case of a local Italian immigrant who had been bludgeoned by members of the police. A crowd of workers formed around the posting and we all became so thoroughly enraged that two applecart were upended and a barrel was thrown to the side of the road. Subsequently we marched through town chanting, "Damn the Police!"