Date: Fri, 19 Sep 1997 09:59:31 -0500
Subject: M-G: Re: M-TH: Wall street pathognominics


David Bedggood wrote:

>Doug makes a lot of the conditions today compared with those of  80
>years ago. Is this a valid comparison? The first and only
>proletarian revolution took place in a backward capitalist
>semi-colony. The conditions facing Russian workers and peasants were
>similar to those facing the masses of workers and peasants in the
>world today, war, famine, disease, starvation i.e. capitalist
>exploitation and oppression.  What made the difference then was the
>self-conscious band of marxists who formed the Bolsheviks against the
>menshevik current. The Bolsheviks organised a tiny minority against
>the stream of worker and peasant consciousness, and
>evolutionary/fatalist marxism represented by the then mensheviks.

A difference between now and then, which you may regard as trivial, is that
there was a vast worldwide socialist and communist movement 80 years ago
which simply doesn't exist today. What do you/we do about *that*?


Doug

--

Doug Henwood
Left Business Observer
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email: <mailto:dhenwood-AT-panix.com>
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