Monday 26 March 2018

Evitable History

Please read (and contribute to) the historical discussion in the combox for The Practice Of Deception. We realize that:

historical developments are neither inevitable nor predictable;

there is a lot of work for Poul Anderson's Time Patrol;

there is also endless scope for alternative histories fiction;

in the words of Shakespeare's Second Witch, every battle is "...lost and won..." (see here) but, from our point of view, it is lost or won with major consequences either way;

also relevant is Marx's and Engels' statement that the outcome of class struggles is never inevitable because every past fight has:

"...each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes."
-Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto (Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England, 1985), 1, p. 79.

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

For once, I agree, mostly, with something said by Marx/Engels. Except I don't think a "revolutionary reconstitution" of a society will be as rapid and simplistic as made out. I found many more insights in Adam Smith's THE WEALTH OF NATIONS or Edmund Burke's REFLECTIONS ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. Or in Alexis de Tocqueville's THE OLD REGIME AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.

Sean