File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1997/97-02-17.213, message 30


Date: Sat, 15 Feb 1997 18:11:20 +0000
From: Mark Jones <majones-AT-netcomuk.co.uk>
Subject: M-I: The political failure of Western Communism


Louis Godena writes:
> what can
> be the future of class-struggle parties existing precariously in a modern 
> West?

Lenin said in the Zurich Volkshaus on 22 January 1917: 'the coming years
... will lead to popular uprisings under the leadership of the
proletariat against the power of finance capital, against the big banks,
and against the capitalists; and these upheavals cannot end otherwise
than with the expropriation of the bourgeoisie, with the victory of
socilaism.' But he ended by saying: 'We of the older generation may not
live to see the decisive battles of this coming revolution.'

What Louis properly says is that India, China and Islam have more in
common with the west than with each other. They are all capitalisms of
one kind or another. The differences aren't fundamental. You don't need
fancy theories about cultural differnces or Spenglerian gloom about he
fate of the west: the Theory of Uneven and Combined Development will do
nicely to explain what's going on in the world.

As for the modern working class, that pathetic bunch of apostates, let
us remember that Trade Unions and the related forms of mass,
pre-television social activity were the only real context for Communist
poltiics in the US or the UK for that matter. There never was a
revolutionary wave in the US, so what is different now? Only that the
water has ebbed away and left the fish more exposed. But why has the
water ebed? Remember that unions, friendly societies and stuff like that
arose historically when the village moved to the town, took its extended
family social tradition with it, and found nothing to eat, nowhere to
live and deadly sweatshops to work in.All those forms of mass
self-organisation had their origins in the first huge upswing of
capitalism between 1750 and 1850, did they not? And they were destined
to pass from the scene when in the nature of things capitalism began to
stand on its own two feet and develop on its own dynamic and not just
out of plundering the collapsing margins.

Social solidarity is primarily expressed in the workplace, not in the
trade union. Waged labour is today a more common feature of humanity's
everyday life than it ever was. The working class is larger, more
self-confident and more powerful than it ever was too(or why is there
such a massive political and social reaction going on, which has made
Louis Godena temporarily depressed, unfortunately? It is going on
because they are frightened of us, not for any other reason.)

America is strong indeed, compared to India or China or even Europe.
Compared to the working class it is a paper tiger.

Trade Unions, social democratic mass parties with agendas for
parliamentary socialism, bolshevism and its constructivist theories,
were all legitimate expressions of the protean energy of the working
class but they were all illusionistic, fantasising an emancipation they
were clearly not able to deliver. Is the working class today right or
wrong to be dismissive of those who continue to peddle those old
nostrums? Workers are not sentimental. They have grandparents who tell
them stories.They have few illusions about the past or about their own
lives. The socialism that is to come will come through catastrophe which
no-one should relish anticipating. But it will come, Louis.
 
-- 
Regards,
Mark



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