File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1997/97-02-11.162, message 61


Date: 11 Feb 97 03:05:20 EST
From: neil <74742.1651-AT-CompuServe.COM>
Subject: M-I: labor parties---record in power--and out!


dear friends,

Max BS wants to constrict  the parameter of debate
as he knows the lib-labs and social democrats have
vastly trimmed their sails and are even going for 
the neo-liberal capitalists austerity programe .

Max avoids the obvoius , that the soc. dems. parties have
ther own material ineterest  as brokers for the
capitalists wages tyranny, and as rceceivers of corporate
 largesse  and 'special'  bourgeois  state programmes.


The issue  IS LABOR PARTIES IN POWER, the Jamaica Labor
Party, a staid bourgeois party in reality, othen uses populist
and radical rhetoric to get workers votes and along 
with Manleys  PNP ,open social democrats, compete
for power  in elections --but work in tandem against 
the workers and for the IMF, World Bank, & imperialism once the 
election falderall is stripped away.

The point is to nail these fakirs, whether they call thmeselves
Labor, socialist, communist, etc.i n and out of power because
their integration into the state machine means they are going
to prop up the capitalist rule over workers with all its
disasterous and barbaric consequences.

 Max, now you took a powder on  another key issue after i 
gave supportive historical facts about the Western soviets
in Germany, Hungary, Italy , etc. (and Russia)and their mass councils 
movemnets to make revolution. 
Your only remarks are sneering that since the workers
could not make to the finish line first, the movements 
are just losers.  But the fact that these upheavals occured 
and the workers launched   valourous bids for power is enough
to debunk your paens to class collaboration and wage slavery --liberal style.

Your trail of sneering irreverence to these  tremendous sacrifices 
to build a new non-exploitative type society  can only put you
in the camp of another prettifier of " eternal"  capitalism , albeit with
 doses of Teddy Kennedy Liberal brand   cologne poured on to 
cover the systems  rancid stench.

You objected to the pointing to the post WW1  German
social democracy, Ebert, Noske, in power as a grave digger of workers revolution
 with its alliances with the Reichswehr and the Freikorps
and German capital. Ample evidence shows the 
incubation of the Freikorps by social democracy and the
far- right bosses  paved the way for the massive nazi movemnt 
that came a few years later.

You were right about the opportunism  of the German
Communist Party, KPD, esp. after the revolutionary wave
subsided by late 1923. The KPD did make a bloc with 
the right wing nationalists in 1923 after the Ruhr occupation
by France and continued this after the  crisis passed
with a policy of "National bolshevism"
Later in 1927-8, having itself  been debased in greater servitude to
Stalins Russian govt. The KPD switched and began sitself 
supporting larger  German military  appropriations because
of the Militiary and training Pact of  Russia and 
the Weimar Regime.


Western Democratic imperialism did not initially mind 
Hitlerism in power--as long as these fascists used their
muscle and terror on the militant workers, Jews, etc.
It was when the German ruling class own growing crisis
saw them re-arm the Reich  for global conquests -- mainly
encroachments on the booty, investment  and stolen loot  controlled by
 the democracies, that the western democrats began vaporing
to get the  Nazis wings clipped.  

Your views on the american economy show you to 
be nationalistic, myopic, Keynesian . Capitalist are not just  some
philanthopic job creators as your paens about 
creating "higher employment" imply. Capital will
only invest where profits ARE HIGH ENOUGH to
accumulate  capital at the average  minimum going level.
Mere increases in profits are not enough, it is
the RATE of profits that determines where the
exploiters will invest. In other words the profits 
must at least equal and  usually be at a higher
RATE than the global competition in the given
industires or else capital opts out and goes 
toward greener pastures--or sits.--or else
speculates in more risky  non-productive schemes.

Gaining reform s now  could release the 
Damocles sword from over some  workers heads--
but only temporarily .
and what you cover up is that the rulers
and their state-- liberal and conservative-have
vastly increased their REAL POLICY of huge blitzkreig against the
workers livlihoods and the workers are at present
hardly able to fight even  successful holding actions.

The movements on the ground are mostly 
defensive and it will take higher froms
of working class organization , independent of
capitalist control, intervention of communists
is part of this process too, and SPREADING 
each class fight against capital as widely as
is possible to make forward advances,
We should also show some humility 
and listen to the workers we are allied with.
Sometimes even the teahers need to be taught. 

We should not sow the Max BS type illusions in multi-
millionare explotier liberals like his  Ted Kennedy,
Kennedy epitomizes bourgeois liberalism in
utter criminal  political  bankruptcy.
Its the tale of the silver spoon idler, the eltist
parasite, who after robbing the workers blind,
decides that to keep social control, its "good
policy" to "give back" 10 cents for every dollar
he/she has stolen from labor.
He also gets apologists to promote this
"progressive" policy bragging that  "you
see, the conservatives only will give you
9 cents" 
The difference is that Max covers this 
flim-flam up as social progress whilst
the bonified worker partisans exposes that
the workers are in  fact being fleeced
by both liberal / social democrat and
conservative.


Neil






 




 



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