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Article: Zapatismo and the social sciences (1). (Polemic).
- Article from:
- Capital & Class
- Article date:
- September 22, 2002
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2002 Conference of Socialist Economists. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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The zapatista uprising poses fundamental challenges for how we think about social theory and political practice. The great contribution of the zapatistas has been to break the connection between revolution and control of the state.
Perhaps the saddest legacy that the twentieth century leaves us is disillusionment, loss of hope.
If we look back at the debates of a hundred years ago, what is striking about them is their optimism. Look, for example, at the debate between Rosa Luxemburg and Eduard Bernstein on the question of reform or revolution: both sides in the debate took it for granted that of course the world could be made a better place, that a ...