http://www.usmarxisthumanists.org/articles/why-philosophy-why-now-on-the-revolutionary-legacies-of-raya-dunayevskaya-clr-james-and-anton-pannekoek/ An affiliate of the Intenational Marxist-Humanist Organization Sun, 15 Jan 2012 10:46:49 +0000 hourly 1 http://www.usmarxisthumanists.org/articles/why-philosophy-why-now-on-the-revolutionary-legacies-of-raya-dunayevskaya-clr-james-and-anton-pannekoek/comment-page-1/#comment-15 steven colatrella Thu, 17 Jun 2010 09:15:19 +0000 http://www.usmarxisthumanists.org/?p=542#comment-15 Thanks for this urgently needed and interesting comment. As someone highly influenced by CLR James, I find this criticism mostly warranted, though I think that the movements that followed the theoretical leaps of 1948 and 1957 must have made these seem sufficient. As you point out here, the Polish and Iranian revolutions, which came much later, show us that more is needed, without falling back on the old formulas. I would say that the most recent questions arise from Thailand, Greece and Honduras - it seems that in Bolivia, Venezuela and elsewhere in L.America people have tried to transform the state through an open dialectic between direct democracy and representative democracy. this has pitfalls as well but is a new strategy it seems to me. That strategy - democracy first, then a radicalization (same thing happened in ancient Athens by the way) - was happening in Honduras and Thailand but the army was used brutally to crush the movement. Why was it possible for these states to act like Burma's military, previously a rogue state and win against such mass movements for democracy? Thanks for this urgently needed and interesting comment. As someone highly influenced by CLR James, I find this criticism mostly warranted, though I think that the movements that followed the theoretical leaps of 1948 and 1957 must have made these seem sufficient. As you point out here, the Polish and Iranian revolutions, which came much later, show us that more is needed, without falling back on the old formulas. I would say that the most recent questions arise from Thailand, Greece and Honduras – it seems that in Bolivia, Venezuela and elsewhere in L.America people have tried to transform the state through an open dialectic between direct democracy and representative democracy. this has pitfalls as well but is a new strategy it seems to me. That strategy – democracy first, then a radicalization (same thing happened in ancient Athens by the way) – was happening in Honduras and Thailand but the army was used brutally to crush the movement. Why was it possible for these states to act like Burma’s military, previously a rogue state and win against such mass movements for democracy?

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