25 Mar 2012

Sterile sectarianism versus obedient compromise with evil





Sometimes all the models look wrong, the British far left are excluded and marginal but those who compromise are soon swept away too.  Its easy to point to leftists without influence to justify participation with what ultimately is evil.  Its also easy for those who reject such compromises to justify their own impotent failure which too is an acceptance of what is wrong.  Of course some decisions, one thinks of the Irish Green Party coalition with notoriously corrupt Fianna Fail, are obviously untenable.  Achieving necessary change is not easy in European politics at present, what we have has failed and creating an alternative means profound change.  Anyway my almost continuous meditation on this was rewoken when I read the following paragraph:



Here lies the dilemma of the revolutionary within a society unripe for revolution. If he stands aside from the main currents of social change, he becomes purist, sectarian, without influence. If he swims with the current, he is swept downward by the flow of reformism and compromise.


MORE HERE

1 comment:

Unknown said...

This is profound stuff Derek. If the left are about change and the right order, then we need to ask ourselves whether 'change' or 'order' have a greater time in the limelight. We're struggling with a sense that the right is normal and the left exceptional. The irony is that left and right both agree that it would take something revolutionary and exceptional to turn around the ecological crisis. The difference is that the right think it's a knockown argument against the 'unrealism' of people like us.

I think too, that some of our wounds are self-inflcted. I'm heartily sick of the civil war between the religious and secular left.

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