Re: [ox-en] Spreading the word
- From: Stefan Meretz <stefan.meretz hbv.org>
- Date: Wed, 16 Oct 2002 09:41:30 +0200
On Wednesday 16 October 2002 00:16, Graham Seaman wrote:
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.
If I did: sorry for that, Pietro!
In context 'less reformist' could have been
replaced with 'a bit more aggressive', 'a bit more ambitious', or any
ok.
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...
Of course: better practices:-)
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?
What du you mean with "ouside help" -- god? (Don't take "god" too serious,
this can also be "real truth theory" etc.)
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..
IMHO no model assuming a standpoint outside can work.
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?
Wow - the oekonux e-book!
This would be very, very cool, but most ambitious.
Ciao,
Stefan
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