but it risks fundamentally misapplying concepts which do not actually befit the nature of a given historical society/movement.
We learn from Marxist methodology that each revolutionary situation or political-economic organization of a given society is historically specific,
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bounded by social forces rooted in (but not *reducible to*) the productive technologies and relationships formed in dialectic with them. Far from precluding human agency, this approach allows for history to be read in an open and rich way. To say that history and economy have
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so-called 'laws of motion', as in the realm of physics, does not imply a fatalistic framework (as an aside: the mind-bending complexities shown in chaos theory, even in such 'simple' cases as the double pendulum, are still strictly deterministic; nevertheless,
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the sheer magnitude of possible paths from such a 'simple' two-particle system as the double-pendulum alone, demonstrate that even with ostensibly 'perfect' knowledge about a system, the possible outcomes are myriad).
The act of interpreting history thus demands an
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uncompromisingly high attention to particularity, to the historically specific; only through "exerting ourselves to know the particular"(Hegel) are we given access to Universality (in this case, what we might call 'transhistorical' laws of motion).
To return to the beginning
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of this thread: it is fundamentally mistaken to apply apparently 'universal' ('anarchist', 'Marxist', 'communist', etc.) categories to movements/societies where they simply do not possess (at least partial) historical continuity with either existing social forms, or the
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history of intellectual-ideological interpretations thereof.
We begin with the most abstract, but from there we proceed to the concrete, and from there again outward towards Universality (cf. Mao, "On Practice").
From "De Rerum Natura" (Lucretius), we have: "The World has
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persisted for many a long year, having once been set going in the appropriate motions. From these, all else follows."
We are burdened now with the highest purpose of "overcoming the predatory phase of our development" (Einstein), overthrowing with passion and violence
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the shackles imposed by Evropa Æternus upon humanity, the wrath of the white Colony, along with its fetid offspring, Capital, and its loyal guard-dogs of Fascists and the bourgeois State.
Revolution, that most courageous of words in all languages (Debs), awaits us
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at the gates, but only if We are kindly and wise enough to greet our belated guest at last with open arms and furious Lust.
We still have a World to win. Let's get to it.
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