Date: 09 Feb 97 02:22:25 EST From: neil <74742.1651-AT-CompuServe.COM> Subject: M-I: Labor Parties-----record in power. dear friends, Max B Sawicky thinks that worker reforms under capitalism are due to the generosity of the capitalists and their system. This is a denial of 20 th cent. history. Most all the workers have won in reforms were wonby the class struggles of the workers themselves, organized on not only the political but also industrial fields as well . Many workers have paid with their livelihoods and in many cases their lives fighting capitalist wage slavery to improve their lot. In some countries, in periods of extreme crisis and instability workers en-masse have at times tried to sieze industrial and state power form the rich. Unfortunately in most cases their efforts were betrayed from within and strangled and/or crushed by force >from without. Actually so-called workers parties participation in capitalist parliamentary charades have not actually won lasting reforms since the early part of this century . The heady days of workers winning things in parliaments was the 19th century up to WW1, then parliamantary parties became open recruiting sergeants for war and capitalist austerity . Workers parliamentary parties have actually in practice mainly served to short-circuit the militant & then revolutionary organizations of workers from the embyonic Paris Commune to the Post-WW1 Soviets/ councils in Russia, Germany, Hungary , Italy , etc. and even up to the present period like France in '68 and Portugal in '74. As I pointed out in last post on this, wherever you find the bosses state playing musical chairs with their parliamentary parties today , left, labor or right wing, it is the workers who always get hurt. I ask Max BS and some others here to take a look at the reality of the situation from Canada to Europe (East and West) to Japan and Australia today . When the workers rise to fight on their own class terrain and escape the influence of rancid parliamants and their lies and deceit, then the Parties in parliament, social democrats/laborist , fake marxists, liberals, Conservatives Democrats ,Republicans , all unite to show their loyalty to the capitalist system and use the courts, cops, goons and jails to enforce wage slavery & tyranny. As the clincher, I quote this gem from the learned Max BS on his profound understanding of the workers class interests and struggles. " No lasting improvements have resulted from extra-legal revolutionary demands for socialist transformation with the exception of a handful of under-developed countries..........." I hope no one here will die of laughter. For Max BS, much of the great upheavals of the 20th century just never happened. Oh what the bliss consciousness of stuffing ballots can do for ones mind! In fact any serious and not jaded liberal look at the history of a good # of advanded capitals from WW1 shows it is precisiely from periods of workers mass movements and struggles, many "extra-legal', including those of US workers , especially where these struggles raised the infuence and spectre of socialist influence & even revolution is where the capitals political state was forced to grant reforms, mainly in order to gain back social control and derail/block the advancing movements of the class. Now today with the workers here in retreat foo two decades, the capitalists have launched a huge counter-offensive to take back much of what workers have won thru militant extra- parliamentary mass struggle and actions. New workers mass organizing for struggle is badly needed, and part of this is the infusion of revolutionary ideology for a worker controlled society of real socialism with production for human needs and not sale & profits.. By the way Max BS, per yours of 2/08 , what in the hell did Teddy Kennedy have to do with gaining workers any minimum wage?. I guess the very fact that workers saw his name on some ballot paper was enough to make him a savior? Shame on us 'ultra lefts"! We never knew he could walk on water! Neil --- from list marxism-international-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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