File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1997/97-02-11.162, message 24


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 ---


   

Driftline Main Page

 

Display software: ArchTracker © Malgosia Askanas, 2000-2005