Date: Wed, 1 Jan 1997 02:43:33 +0000
Subject: M-G: polite menshevism




Doug and Lou having a polite squabble over which part of the world 
working class is most able to make a revolution in "the forseeable 
future": 

> At 6:31 PM 12/30/96, Louis R Godena wrote defending his line that 
Western workers have been bought off, while semi-colonial 
workers/peasants are the best prospects for revolution: 

> >But Doug,  those same  "forces" who,  in your view,  are destitute of the
> >"education or skills necessary to challenge capital's power" are precisely
> >those who have successfully authored revolutions in China,  Russia,  Cuba,
> >Indochina,  and Africa,  while it is your  "proletariat" -- the "true
> >creators of value and possessors of industrial skill"-- who have been most
> >decisively and ignominiously "crushed by the juggernaut of capital".

 Doug comes back questioning  Lous' prized `revolutions':>
 
> The point isn't only to make a revolution, it's to sustain one. Let's look
> at the record of the examples you cite. [snip]
> One reason these revolutions had so much difficulty, aside from their own
> domestic contradictions, was the implacable hostility of the United States
> and the other imperialist powers. That power is probably greater than ever
> now, now that the USSR is gone. So how can any poor country make a
> successful revolution today? For the Third World to have a revolution, the
> imperialist powers have to be defanged, and that is impossible without the
> masses in those countries doing the job. I don't dispute that they don't
> seem up to the task, but they have to rise to it, or barbarism will be the
> victor.

Lou gets a bit exasperated. Doug is showing signs of  Troskyite 
deviation:
> 
> >Doug,  please don't become -- even by default -- a babbler of Received
> >Doctrine,  especially when the overwhelming preponderance of evidence
> >suggests a reality far removed from the type of political gerrymandering we
> >witness daily in this forum.
>
This is Godenaspeak for Trotskyists who continue to belief that the 
industrial working class is capable of revolution, despite the 
counter-revolutionary period we are living through:

Doug  denies any such deviation and appeals to the real world:
 
> I'm not making this argument for scriptural reasons; I'm doing it from an
> analysis of the world I see around me. If I were a true catechist, I'd be
> talking about death agonies and imminent revolution; I'm not. What I'm
> saying is, if the first world proles don't become revolutionary, or
> radically reformist even, socialism anywhere is pretty much out of the
> question. In case you haven't noticed, I'm of the opinion that socialism is
> pretty much out of the question for the forseeable future.
> 
Thank you Doug for pointing out clearly the logical conclusion which 
Godena refuses to draw:  that revolution must happen in the 
imperialist heartlands to allow semi-colonial national liberation 
struggles to become "permanent revolutions".  Lou does not want to draw 
this conclusion, or perhaps he can't since he refuses to learn the 
lessons of the permanent revolution in Russia in  1917, and its 
failure in China in 1927. While Doug draws the conclusion that "socialism
 is pretty much out of the question for the foreseeable future" which is 
the position of most of the `left' today, disoriented and dispirited 
by the collapse of Stalinism,  Godena's belief in semi-colonial revolutions 
is a Maoist/menshevik stageist utopia. 
So are those of us who talk about "socialism on the agenda" 
catechists?  Some might be, they can speak for themselves. For my 
part we are in a democratic counter-revolutionary period in which 
workers are struggling defensively against neo-liberal reforms and 
the restoration of capitalism in most of the former Stalinist workers 
states. But world capitalism cannot solve its economic problems 
without much more severe attacks which will call forth new struggles 
in the semi-colonies and in the imperialist countries. I base this 
assessment not on dogma, but on the analysis of the economic 
conditions of the present which do not yet allow imperialist countries 
to return to satisfactory profits  without further driving down wages and 
conditions and hence driving up the rate of exploitation. Since these 
intensified struggles are for me definitely on the agenda, we cannot but put 
socialism on the agenda too. After all, in the confrontation over 
further reactionary attacks, the question of who wins is also a 
question of who rules.  We cannot leave socialism off the agenda 
unless we are  totally pessimistic of workers ability to fight and 
win socialism in the next period, and that the best we can hope for is to defend 
democracy against neo-fascism, while preparing workers for the struggle 
for socialism some time in the "not foreseeable future".  Such 
historical pessimism has a name - of course, menshevism.

Dave


     --- from list marxism-general-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---