peaccenicked
28th February 2002, 15:09
"A New Civilization
But when the moment comes, when that pilgrimage of women and men toward the realization of their own humanity begins again, as it will, we will be there. DSA itself may well be transformed at that moment, its cadres and energy and ideas being absorbed into new organizational forms that we cannot now even imagine. And yet it will be there.
Those who lose heart on the very eve of a new generation of change should remember the profound truth Antonio Gramsci articulated from an Italian jail cell in a decade that saw the triumph of fascism- and, with an exception or two, the spectacular failure of socialism and the destruction of the Russian Revolution by Stalinism. Socialism, Gramsci said, was not a matter of a political victory on this or that day, or even this or that decade. It was not an economic program, a recipe. It was a "moral and intellectual reformation,'' a fight to transform the very culture and will of those who had, since time immemorial, been made subordinate, the epochal work of the creation of a new civilization.
We live today in the most radical of times; humanity is fighting at this very moment over the content of that new civilization- of a new planet, if you will - and that struggle will go on beyond the lifetime of every one of us. There is no guarantee that the vision of a democratic and communitarian socialization will prevail over the bureaucrats and the technocrats who abound in this period. All socialism is- "all"- is the theory and practice which seeks to empower the people of the North, South, East and West to take control of their destiny for the first time.
Those who join the movement for the immediate rewards of power are advised to apply elsewhere. Those who are willing to wager their lives on the possibility of freedom and justice and solidarity should pay their dues.
This article first appeared in the February 24 - March 8, 1988 issue of In These Times. "
Harrington formed his ideas in the Trotskyist movement.
A movement that claims to be the true heir of Leninism
http://www.bolshevik.org/mb/8trotskyism.htm
But when the moment comes, when that pilgrimage of women and men toward the realization of their own humanity begins again, as it will, we will be there. DSA itself may well be transformed at that moment, its cadres and energy and ideas being absorbed into new organizational forms that we cannot now even imagine. And yet it will be there.
Those who lose heart on the very eve of a new generation of change should remember the profound truth Antonio Gramsci articulated from an Italian jail cell in a decade that saw the triumph of fascism- and, with an exception or two, the spectacular failure of socialism and the destruction of the Russian Revolution by Stalinism. Socialism, Gramsci said, was not a matter of a political victory on this or that day, or even this or that decade. It was not an economic program, a recipe. It was a "moral and intellectual reformation,'' a fight to transform the very culture and will of those who had, since time immemorial, been made subordinate, the epochal work of the creation of a new civilization.
We live today in the most radical of times; humanity is fighting at this very moment over the content of that new civilization- of a new planet, if you will - and that struggle will go on beyond the lifetime of every one of us. There is no guarantee that the vision of a democratic and communitarian socialization will prevail over the bureaucrats and the technocrats who abound in this period. All socialism is- "all"- is the theory and practice which seeks to empower the people of the North, South, East and West to take control of their destiny for the first time.
Those who join the movement for the immediate rewards of power are advised to apply elsewhere. Those who are willing to wager their lives on the possibility of freedom and justice and solidarity should pay their dues.
This article first appeared in the February 24 - March 8, 1988 issue of In These Times. "
Harrington formed his ideas in the Trotskyist movement.
A movement that claims to be the true heir of Leninism
http://www.bolshevik.org/mb/8trotskyism.htm