Follow up to my "pie in the sky" revolutionary socialism essay

On the main ZNet page a reader wrote:

Paul, you're a good man. You are doing fine work. I can't make you into me, nor anyone else. And Noam Chomsky is a good man, a world-class reader. But what in the hell did he mean by "the spiritual transformation of great masses of people"? He really said such balderdash? I represent the other side of the left, where there are about two or three people, who strike most of our erstwhile "comrades" as having , as you once wrote  memorably, "nauseating cynicism." The pie-in-thesky quotient of your essay here is off the charts, though I think much of your other work on the detestable Obama is much closer to the "nauseating cynicism" pole than the hopeless romantic of the Kropotkin brigade who sees socialism right around the corner in good ole U.S.A.  It's to me a tragic situation: the only good thinkers in America are so deluded about the sociological reality of the supersystem's power, the empire's terrific locks on our social institutions, they must resort to invoking long dead and long bygone heroes to summon any degree of Lincoln Brigade fire. You rightly excoriate "left-liberal" thinking for its tremulous adherence to traditonal structure, but then you see grand "opportunities to reconnect" and fire up the Peace Train, when the reality is laptop drone bombardiers, computer algorithm Goldman Sacks Wall Street monopoly fraud,  mortgage disasters, and the rechign of a majority of Americans, for the first time, who call themselves "pro-life." Good luck with your activism, and to all Z others with their righteous "resistance," but damn, what the hell happened to "Realism"?

My response:

A Half-Time Speech....
By Street, Paul

Oh, I've addressed this fatalism issue before.  Have you ever heard of "Pascal's bargain" and Chomsky's version of it?  Look it up (I lack the energy to go find the relevant links) .Another key reference is Gramsci's comment: "pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will."  Yes, it's faith-based (for all I know Gramsci came up with that phrase behind fascist prison bars) to some degree perhaps -- and yet absolutely rational at the same time.   It's crazy to believe in the chances of revolution but there's something crazier: NOT believing.  You lose nothing by believing, but you lose all (even if the "all" is just  a 1% chance of radical transformation) by choosing not to believe. Maybe the odds are just 1 in 10, 1 in 20, 1 in 100...terrible, but why then think and act (or refuse to act) in such a way as to make sure that the chances are 0 in 100?  That's just suicidal for the species if my opening sections are right (and they are).  Belief and spiritual commitment (you are wrong if you think that is only about mysterious religion) are material forces in history.  To me this is very elementary. If it is all in fact irrevocably tragic and hopeless  than at least find that out resisting..."storming heaven," as Marx said of Paris Communards.  You say "good luck" on activism but its not about luck (or the crystal ball.)..its about a socially conscious existential decision to interject as much democratic-collectivist human agency into the making of history as one can.  I used to interview a few old time radical labor activists (many of them old time shop-floor CPers) from the 1930s and while they had few illusions about history (interviews took place in the Reagan era) they were damn glad they'd rejected the attitude you expressed.  They still had that X factor that makes a great organizer (faith is a big part of that factor). Furthermore the odds are better than you might  think.  History does not move in a linear way alone; there are qualitiative leaps and bounds and many "surprises" that end up making sense in retrospect.  It is, dare I say, dialectical. And so ends my half-time speech. Now get out there and kick some capitalist tail!