#scott harrison

[cccovers]

Hell: The Princess of Darkness #1 cover by Scott Harrison.

[callmeblake]

My Chemical Romance back stage at Aragon Ballroom in Chicago, Illinois -  March 9th, 2005

Sources: 1, 2, 3

Photo Credit: Scott Harrison for Rex Features

Sixth picture used (at least) in K!1495

[milkboydotnet]

There is one danger for the proletarian party to be aware of here, and to learn to avoid like the plague: Since the party knows it must be evaluated by the masses, since it wants to secure the following of the masses, and since it therefore appropriately seeks to present the party to the masses in a good light, there is a tendency to exaggerate to the masses—and even openly lie to them—about just how good the party is. There is a tendency to hide the weaknesses of the party (it's small size at the beginning of the struggle, for example, or its inexperience). There is a tendency to hide mistakes, instead of owning up to them. There is a tendency to proclaim the party as infallible, like the Pope, to pretend it already has all the answers, and to go on tiresomely about how 'correct' it is.      The funny thing about such boastful exaggerations and misrepresentations is that they almost always backfire. The Pope gets nothing but derision and sneers among non-Catholics for his claims of infallibility. In the long run, it is always better to level with the masses, rather than to foster a suspicion and mistrust of the party in their minds. Just as with individuals, the masses will respect a party all the more if it levels with them, owns up to its mistakes and shows it is genuinely trying to correct them. They will respect the party all the more if they see the party seriously trying to learn more about how to lead the masses and advance their interests (i.e., seriously promoting the mass line).      All these tendencies to misrepresent things or lie to the masses are bourgeois to the core. It is the philosophy of the bourgeois newspaper which remarked cynically: 'Leader: One who never permits his followers to discover that he is as dumb as they are.' Real revolutionary leaders, intent on using the mass line, should rather bend over backwards to make it clear to the rest of the party and the masses that the masses know many things which the leaders need to learn from them. That is the Maoist way.

Scott Harrison, The Mass Line and the American Revolutionary Movement

[sophiaisthatgirl]

[spockvarietyhour]

Read this e-novella after the TMP novelization. A nice little quiet story featuring Kirk, Spock and Sulu in the weeks after the Vejur probe. Sulu is faced with fatherhood as Demora is born prematurely, Kirk goes back to the farm where Peter has been more and more remote, and Spock returns to Vulcan to deal with the aftermath of his failure to achieve Kohlinar.

Out of the three the Spock story was the most interesting with some direct parallels to The Voyage Home, which I found interesting (I though possibly too direct a parallel but it works).

[milkboydotnet]

The Bolsheviks were a battle-hardened group who took revolutionary theory very seriously, and fought ferociously about it—even among themselves. But our modern American Marxist revolutionary movement is split between two types of sinners in this regard: First, those in political sects struggle only with outsiders. They accept almost in toto whatever their top leaders and gurus tell them to believe. Second, those outside the sects avoid such struggle, especially among themselves, because they think it is a sign of sectarianism! The liberal petty-bourgeois origins of most of our revolutionary movement really show through when it comes to this issue.

Scott Harrison, How Critical Should Revolutionaries Be of Each Other?

[milkboydotnet]

There is one danger for the proletarian party to be aware of here, and to learn to avoid like the plague: Since the party knows it must be evaluated by the masses, since it wants to secure the following of the masses, and since it therefore appropriately seeks to present the party to the masses in a good light, there is a tendency to exaggerate to the masses—and even openly lie to them—about just how good the party is. There is a tendency to hide the weaknesses of the party (it's small size at the beginning of the struggle, for example, or its inexperience). There is a tendency to hide mistakes, instead of owning up to them. There is a tendency to proclaim the party as infallible, like the Pope, to pretend it already has all the answers, and to go on tiresomely about how "correct" it is.

The funny thing about such boastful exaggerations and misrepresentations is that they almost always backfire. The Pope gets nothing but derision and sneers among non-Catholics for his claims of infallibility. In the long run, it is always better to level with the masses, rather than to foster a suspicion and mistrust of the party in their minds. Just as with individuals, the masses will respect a party all the more if it levels with them, owns up to its mistakes and shows it is genuinely trying to correct them. They will respect the party all the more if they see the party seriously trying to learn more about how to lead the masses and advance their interests (i.e., seriously promoting the mass line).

All these tendencies to misrepresent things or lie to the masses are bourgeois to the core. It is the philosophy of the bourgeois newspaper which remarked cynically: "Leader: One who never permits his followers to discover that he is as dumb as they are." Real revolutionary leaders, intent on using the mass line, should rather bend over backwards to make it clear to the rest of the party and the masses that the masses know many things which the leaders need to learn from them. That is the Maoist way. — Scott Harrison, The Mass Line and the American Revolutionary Movement

[milkboydotnet]

“Do we really need to remind others about all the long list of things we agree on before we dare mention something we disagree on? Do we really need to carefully immerse every criticism in a big bouquet of complements?      Criticisms inherently focus on the ‘negative aspects’ of a group or individual. That is what criticisms are, and what they are for. This is why it is wrong to oppose criticism on the grounds that it is ‘focusing on the negative’. Of course it is focusing on the negative! That is the whole point of it!      The underlying problem here, once again, is that so many people react so negatively to criticism, even when it is complete valid. So the notion has arisen that in order to get away with it you should only raise a criticism after you preface it with a bunch of compliments, blarney, soft-soap and buttering up!      It seems to me that people who emphasize this sort of approach so much have really acquiesced in and accepted our present culture of hostility to criticism and ideological wrangling. They don’t really want to change it, but only to find a way to occasionally get around it with regard to some small matter or other. I would rather work toward a revolutionary culture where one can make a criticism without it being automatically assumed that by doing so you have become the total enemy of the person you criticize.”