Which Do You Want: Revolution Now or More Work?

Make your choice:

• Revolution today

• Massive march and general strike

• Labor Party

• Phone banking to win a City Council seat

Did you pick one of the top three? Too bad, the fourth one is the only one available to you right now in my town of Dallas. Those who disdain the hard work of building toward a better world while day-dreaming about choices they don’t have are making the classic mistake called “ultraleftism.” It is also called the “Infantile Disorder.”

Ultraleftism comes in very handy for armchair socialists who want to sit around and talk all day instead of doing anything. It’s common in so-called “revolutionary” organizations. The wonderful biblical satire “Life of Brian” had an unforgettable scene where the revolutionary zealots bring up some really important development and decide, “This calls for immediate, emergency, discussion!”

Posturing about revolutionary action is nothing but a shameful excuse for supporting the status quo!

I’ve got more bad news for the motormouths. Even if they somehow got the magical transformation they dream of, it wouldn’t work. How would they run this wonderful world they have imagined? The kind of leadership we would have to have in that better world someday is the kind of leadership that we are developing right now in today’s struggles. We have to have them, and we don’t have them now, but the very process of transforming the world also transforms us, the real activists, into the kind of leaders that will be needed!

BTW, and this is a purposeful digression, developing the leadership for a new world is exactly what my four sci-fi novellas are about. They’re on http://lilleskole.us.

In summary, we don’t need infantile rhetoriticians in the movement for a better world. But we sure could use some phone bankers!

–-Gene Lantz

I’m on KNON’s “Workers Beat” talk show at 9 AM Central Time every Saturday. They post my podcasts on KNON.org and Soundcloud every Wednesday. If you are curious about what I really think, take a look at my old personal web site.