| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Crisis in Russia by Arthur Ransome: opponents. This cleavage is over the question of "workers'
control." Most of those who, before the revolution, looked
forward to the "workers' control", thought of it as meaning
that the actual workers in a given factory would themselves
control that factory, just as a board of directors controls a
factory under the ordinary capitalist system. The
Communists, I think, even today admit the ultimate
desirability of this, but insist that the important question is
not who shall give the orders, but in whose interest the
orders shall be given. I have nowhere found this matter
properly thrashed out, though feeling upon it is extremely
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Dreams & Dust by Don Marquis: Seemed to me no larger than upthrust fingers
Silhouetted against the sky;
And at its top the vale was strait,
And the rays were slant
And reached but part way down the sides;
I could not see the moon itself;
I walked through darkness, and the valley's edge
Seemed almost level with the stars,
The stars that were like fireflies in the little trees.
It was the midnight of defeat;
I felt that I had failed;
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Common Sense by Thomas Paine: or two undeceived us; as well may we suppose that nations,
which have been once defeated, will never renew the quarrel.
As to government matters, it is not in the power of Britain
to do this continent justice: The business of it will soon
be too weighty, and intricate, to be managed with any tolerable
degree of convenience, by a power so distant from us, and so
very ignorant of us; for if they cannot conquer us, they cannot
govern us. To be always running three or four thousand miles
with a tale or a petition, waiting four or five months
for an answer, which when obtained requires five or six more
to explain it in, will in a few years be looked upon as folly
Common Sense |
