Date: Sat, 28 Dec 1996 14:10:14 +0100 (MET)
From: malecki-AT-algonet.se (Robert Malecki)
Subject: Re: M-I: Re: What Will Socialism Look Like?


>> Date:          Sat, 28 Dec 1996 01:10:34 -0500
>> To:            marxism-international-AT-jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU
>> From:          dhenwood-AT-panix.com (Doug Henwood)
>> Subject:       Re: M-I: Re: What Will Socialism Look Like?
>> Reply-to:      marxism-international-AT-jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU
>
>> At 12:37 AM 12/28/96, Louis R Godena wrote:
>> 
>> >I believe that any regime that owed the fact of its coming to power solely
>> >to the working class would be a remarkably impotent one which would quickly
>> >marry itself off to the Right to maintain itself in power.    Its subsequent
>> >tenure would be atavistic,  brutish and short.     The workers would be
>> >asked to fulfill a role for which they are simply not suited,  and to
>> >provide the basis for a society wholly foreign to their temperment and
>> >capabilities.     Labor's role is that of modernizer,  not revolutionary --
>> >for that the critical element of unrelenting violence has to be employed in
>> >a systemic and disciplined way.    It is unlikely to emerge from within a
>> >working class context.
>> 
>> So should we just give up this whole Marxist thing?
>> 
>> Doug
>
>Don't worry  Doug,  Godena's not a marxist, he's a narodnik.
>He idealises the peasantry and its capacity for sustained and 
>disciplined violence. Or maybe he has cyborgs in mind.
>Dave.

Oh I don,t know about narodnik. But Godena is writting off the working class 
because he can not envision this class in his schema of popular front 
politics. It will be very interesting to see what Godena has to come with 
for a solution after he has finished writting off this class. The other 
thing that bothers me is that Godena apparently can not see what is going on 
today after the downfall of the Soviet Union. 
His Raphunzel ideas of the working class not being revolutionary gets kicked 
in the ass just about everyday now. The most recent events are coming from 
Korea.

The working class has perhaps been beheaded for years of any kind of 
revolutionary leadership but the contradictions of this society are once 
again coming to the point of of and explosion. It has a lot to do with the 
very special character of pre war history the rise of facism and post war 
history the Stalin-imperialist alliance, then cold war and not a war against 
the western working class that is the motor which is 
driving us toward the brink.

It is fairly simple ABC marxism we are talking about here. The major 
imperialist powers can no longer expand and grow and bring in the super 
profits. So something has to happen. A new war to redivide the pie. Another 
possibility is attacking the living standards of the western working class 
(a very temporary solution) and all of the reforms it has one in order to 
create a little breathing room. The only other alternative that I have heard 
except Godena's writting of the western working class is the space shuttle 
on its way to Mars. The theroy is that if there is life on Mars then we will 
colonize it. This at least as some scientific basic. Godena's ramblings 
about the western working class just don't.

Bob Malecki
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