Notes toward an understanding of revolutionary politics today

An historical survey of the Left is a complex project, recognizing the uneven development of struggles in different continents, the contradictory tendencies, the achievements and limitations, the short and long term legacies, the relationship between economics and politics (the impact of growth or crisis on revolution), in a word, a nuanced analysis that defies intellectual fiats which pretend to define ‘world processes’ via economist and ethno-centric views.

Intellectuals, including academics, are sharply divided across generations between those who have in many ways embraced, however critically, ‘neo-liberalism’ or have prostrated themselves before “the most successful ideology in world history” and its “coherent and systematic vision” and those who have been actively writing, struggling and building alternatives, both socialist and others.

The role of intellectuals in the process of social transformation is complex and significant, but never decisive. They have more often reflected shifts in power between classes than defined ‘independent’ and ‘realistic’ positions as they sometimes, in a self-delusionary fashion, claim. Historically, the great mass of intellectuals have, at best, sided with democratic and nationalist movements, against colonial, dictatorial or fascist regimes. Their support for social revolutionary movements and events has been transitory, contradictory and limited.

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May 16, 2001