About
Hello and Welcome! I’m Louis Godena and I’m brand new to the world of blogging.
Like you, I have many interests. I am a Millwright out of Local 1121 of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters & Joiners (late of the AFL-CIO). I’ve also been to law school (hated it; the Socratic Method is great if you have Socrates or at least a genuine surrogate leading the discussion, otherwise, forget it), served in the United States Air Force in Southeast Asia (liked it okay, other than having to serve the cause with which we were then identified), and even went to grad school here at Harvard. In my spare time I created Revolutionary Radio (if you like *real* hip-hop like Immortal Technique and Sage Francis, tune in!) spent ten years in the Communist Party (don’t for a moment regret it; but I’m happy about the divorce), and overhauled John Deere farm tractors (I raise alfalfa and mixed grasses on about 30 acres near Narragansett Bay, Rhode Island, where I was born).
But, most of all, I have a tenacious fascination with the human drama, what Man is, has been, and (most intriguingly) what He is in the process of becoming.
Hence this weblog. I tend to see the world as a complex galaxy of class forces, each changing at a now minute, now accelerated rate, and each working in its own way to constantly remold our social universe. This, I believe, is the salient feature of human society. Similarly, my “Communism” is not some platonic, pre-existing idea; rather, it continually emerges out of this constant inter-action, this struggle, between groups and classes. After all, the constant evolution of doctrine in response to changing conditions is itself a canon of Marxism.
In the coming weeks I will be talking a bit about the economies of India and China and how revolution is a necessary prerequisite to successful development in large economies. I will also have something to say about the one-party state and perhaps offer some comparisons in that regard between the US and China. Finally, I will be making brief and I hope relevant comments on the state of revolutionary movements in the so-called developing world as well as here in the West.
I hope you find my weblog useful and thought-provoking. I would like Marxism International to become a convivial forum for discussing labor and contemporary politics. Please remember I don’t do this for a living, so it is very much a work in progress. Feel free to contribute your news and ideas. If you live in the southern New England area, let’s get together and talk politics or whatever. Send everything to louis.godena@gmail.com or click where appropriate on the blog.