Re: [ox-en] Spreading the word
- From: Graham Seaman <graham seul.org>
- Date: Tue, 15 Oct 2002 18:16:53 -0400 (EDT)
On Sun, 13 Oct 2002, Stefan Meretz wrote:
On Sunday 13 October 2002 04:20, pietro wrote:
so, if we start now to try to influence the academia maybe in 10-15
years governments will be using free software. shouldn't we be more
ambitious? isn't that too little? i'm in favor of publishing a book.
i'd love to help translating it into portuguese and publidhing it here
in brasil. but shouldn't GNU/Marxism be less reformist?
Of couse, it should be purely revolutionary, the pity is: What the hell is
that? Any action or thought which is not directed to an immediate change
of capitalist society to, say, communism, is by definition reformist -
completely independent of the attitude used for propaganda. Therefore,
reformism vs revolution does not help any. It is an dualism, which itself
is part of bourgois ideology (see Bush).
Hey Stefan, I think you're being a little hard on Pietro - reading too
much into what he said. In context 'less reformist' could have been
replaced with 'a bit more aggressive', 'a bit more ambitious', or any of
several other phrases without all the historical baggage you're trying
to read into it. And in context, I think Pietro is perfectly right - the
Brazilian govt is likely (well, depending what happens in the next week or
so) to be using free software soon anyway, so taking that as a long-term
goal (10-15 years) is a little unambitious to say the least. The fact that
Europe is being left behind is another problem..
The main question of a book should be: What thoughts and theories can help
us to understand the qualitative shift we feel happen? The criterion for
"help" should be: Does it give new explanations or frameworks for
explanation, or not?
That sounds fine. But not exhaustive. Even in those terms, 'deepen
existing explanations', 'provide empirical backing for existing
explanations' would also be valid. And outside all those rather academic
possibilities, surely there are many more just as valid...
Because being inside the process we cannot decide,
what is right/wrong, reformist/revolutionary, good/bad etc. And there is
no standpoint outside.
But that sentence mystifies me - surely you are always in some process,
and you always have to decide what's good or bad with no outside help?
Doing that doesn't mean you have to adopt the 1930's communist party model
of 'left/right deviations from the correct path', which seems to be
what you are hinting at..
However, spreading a portuguese book version in Brazil would be very
cool:-) But maybe we should start with an english one?
Or a German one? Or, even better, an international one? Pietro? How
about a Brazilian contribution? If it's not possible to publish a
multilingual book, I'd be happy to help translate it into English...
But if it's an e-book surely readers can select which languages they
want to read which chapters (of those available in translation) in?
Graham
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