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“…No. 1 is all for potash; therefore B. and the thirty had to be liquidated as saboteurs.\u00a0 In a nationally centralized agriculture the alternative of nitrate of potash is of enormous importance:\u00a0 it can decide the issue of the next war.\u00a0 If N. 1 was in the right, history will absolve him, and the execution of the thirty-one men will be a mere bagatelle.\u00a0 If he was wrong…<\/em><\/p>\n …But how can the present decide what will be judged truth in the future?\u00a0 We are doing the work of prophets without their gift.\u00a0 We replaced vision by logical deduction; but although we all started from the same point of departure, we came to divergent results.\u00a0 Proof disproved proof and finally we had to recur to faith—to axiomatic faith in the rightness of one’s own reasoning.”<\/em><\/p>\n We’ve encountered a rather grim picture these past few weeks of where “good ideas” might carry movements and struggles for freedom, whether it be the self-abnegation of Rubashov or the veritable orgy of violence and decadence of the Baader Meinhof gang.\u00a0 Whereas Gramsci and Stuart Hall demand the inclusion of the intellectual in movement politics, and Mary Kay Vaughan demonstrates that even poorly educated rural school teachers can serve as “organic” mediators between an emerging state and members of society, a wide variety of authors, from Fanon to Havel and Mi\u0142osz, or most recently (and acutely), Mao, regard intellectuals as obstacles to change, even, in the case of Mao, counter-revolutionary.\u00a0 Consider how revolutions might be tied to intellectual leadership, to the totalizing visions of a vanguard.\u00a0 Must movements be rooted in a coherent set of ideas and values to be successful?\u00a0 Gudrun Ensslin at one point tells Ulrike Meinhof that they must adopt a “new morality.”\u00a0 What happens when this new morality encounters success, specifically, the formation of the state?\u00a0 What happens when the inevitable divergencies from the glorious path begin to occur…?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" (Note:\u00a0 This week’s blog gives you a choice—please pick from one of the two prompts below, and as always, keep it short and informal!\u00a0 Engagement and conversation above all!) Look again at your index cards.\u00a0 Flip back and forth between … Continue reading