Reaction and Revolution.

Reaction and revolution comes out of the same well: the realization that things are out of your own control, that you are alienated from the world around you. Reaction takes the superficial changes as essential ones, typically, it believes that the changes caused by capitalism that rips people apart from their usual way of life and throws them into entirely new situations facing new, and ever-changing times that become increasingly difficult to cope with. The beginning of our revolutionary or reactionary consciousness might be found in a quote from Marx describing what happens to society in capitalism:

"All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned."

Marx went on to make the claim that:

"...and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his, real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind"

And this is not quite true. Some of us do realize what is going on. The processes of the market continously forces out a new way of life. Considering the cellular phone as the paradigmatic example. It didn't exist at all in the same way fifteen, or even ten years ago. But then, suddenly, the market spewed it out and people purchased it. Unimaginably quickly we've developed our technology. And now, it is part of our lives. When giving phone numbers we give the cell, usually. We carry it with us everywhere. People work it into their daily routine. Many older citizens complain about this, they cannot themselves grasp the technology very well and they realize that the cell phone has invaded our lives and are now almost considered indispensable. They are even status in many circles.

The reactionary turn is to calcify, a state of mind that Lukacs seems to call 'reificated'. They blame the young in one way or another, taking the apparent over the hidden. Perhaps it is not odd that man has not been "compelled to face with sober senses his, real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind." Part of this has to do with liberal obfuscation of economical basis. Part of it has to do with a relatively easy contradiction between the working class and the ruling class. It has not broken into open crisis in the center: and -then- man will face his real conditions of life with a somber realization. As for now, however, it is still quite possible to survive by blaming the Social Democrats, immigrants, kids or whoever. This is what reactionaries do. Essentialism is a very important part of their ideology. The idea that there are 'essential traits' to a group: such as arabs being violent just because they're arabs.

The revolutionary way leads to a contemplation and understanding of the forces that drive forward these changes. Not a wish to reverse them, either, but to harness them and bring them back under human control rather than the absurd god of money and finance that we all serve.

Reaction and revolution comes from the same wellspring. One of the most important things to do for the left is to reveal, mercilessly, the actual basis of life that supports the world that we live in and cause our alienation from one another, the fetishism of commodities where who we are and how good we are as people is measured by what we have, or do not have, in ways of the material.