Well Marx already has the formulation of “capitalism creates its own gravediggers” which is his idea that the material conditions created by capitalism create individuals who are committed to overthrow it, and so the challenge historically is how to get these people all pulling the same correct direction, and once you do, how do you keep it from breaking apart or giving into reformism or whatever.

But there’s something about the way it is framed? Those of us who want to see capitalism overthrown are able to read something more abstract into it, but the metaphor persists more or less intact. The brutality of it never gives way to the truth that we read into it. So in that way when we accept the truth there is violence that hitches a ride in our reasoning. How far are we then from Bordiga’s formulation of “Socialism and Barbarism”? Idk. Everyone knows that quote, but people don’t know about Matewan, or the American Strike waves of 1932, or Burkina Faso, or Pancho Villa.

In short, is what we are learning and repeating educational in a revolutionary way? After all, as Paulo Friere said, “When education isn’t liberating it is the dream of the oppressed to become the oppressor.”