I think this has a very straightforward answer.

If someone is in danger and you try to your fullest ability to save them but fail, does that mean that you should not have tried? Perhaps if you had adequate reason to judge it impossible and had something beneficial you could accomplish by turning your attention elsewhere. We do not have adequate reason to judge revolution impossible and we have nothing beneficial to accomplish except those things that could each be fairly characterized as “doing our part” for the revolution.

The only waste is in not doing our part.

Man’s dearest possession is life. It is given to him but once, and he must live it so as to feel no torturing regrets for wasted years, never know the burning shame of a mean and petty past; so live that, dying, he might say: all my life, all my strength were given to the finest cause in all the world──the fight for the Liberation of Mankind.

― Nikolai Ostrovsky

I’m a Marxist for the same reason I’m a scientist. Of all the belief systems I’ve read into, it’s the least-wrong thing I can find to understand my surroundings. If I found something less wrong I’d believe in it instead. What I can’t justify is knowingly going back to believing in something more wrong. My life would be a waste of time if I spent it lying to myself and hiding my head in the sand. If revolution doesn’t occur in my lifetime, most of the neat sci-fi tech won’t either and I still try to be a happy Sisyphus studying the most rudimentary versions of those things because I know they’re the best option for survival.

No. I read this book by an old communist who did all the work possible before, during and after our local civil war. She had been through imprisonment and the works. Kept study groups all the way to the age of 75.

She stated that even though revolution was not won in her lifetime she is content and assured that the work for a better tomorrow continues and will continue as long as it takes.

She said:

Sosialismi on niin suuri aate, ettei se toteudu minun elinaikanani, eikä lastenikaan. Mutta sen puolesta kannattaa tehdä työtä ja pienetkin saavutukset ovat tärkeitä.

Translation: Socialism is such a big project that it won’t come to pass in my lifetime, or in the lifetime of my children. But it’s worth working/laboring for. Even small acts count.

My take away from it is that this is a process and she understood that. Nobody knows how long it takes or how many times it fails or if it succeeds. If we read Marx though we know it is inevitable. Things are always in motion and will continue to be.

No. The world didn’t end in the cold war despite the multiple times we were literally one man’s actions away from extinguishing life on earth in nuclear hellfire. As long as humanity exists, so does the drive towards freedom. And in the yearning for liberation, the fertile soil it is, is always the seed of communism.

The understanding of the men of ancient times went a long way. How far did it go? To the point where some of them believed that things have never existed - so far, to the end, where nothing can be added. Those at the next stage thought that things exist but recognized no boundaries among them. Those at the next stage thought there were boundaries but recognized no right and wrong. Because right and wrong appeared, the Way was injured, and because the Way was injured, love became complete. But do such things as completion and injury really exist, or do they not?

There is such a thing as completion and injury - Mr. Chao playing the lute is an example. There is such a thing as no completion and no injury - Mr. Chao not playing the lute is an example. Chao Wen played the lute; Music Master K’uang waved his baton; Hui Tzu leaned on his desk. The knowledge of these three was close to perfection. All were masters, and therefore their names have been handed down to later ages. Only in their likes they were different from him [the true sage]. What they liked, they tried to make clear. What he is not clear about, they tried to make clear, and so they ended in the foolishness of “hard” and "white. "Their sons, too, devoted all their lives to their fathers’ theories, but till their death never reached any completion. Can these men be said to have attained completion? If so, then so have all the rest of us. Or can they not be said to have attained completion? If so, then neither we nor anything else have ever attained it.

The torch of chaos and doubt - this is what the sage steers by. So he does not use things but relegates all to the constant. This is what it means to use clarity.

it’s a waste of time regardless. might as well try to revolt.

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