Subject: Re: M-I: In the time of Stalin, Nation, Race and Class
From: jschulman-AT-juno.com (Jason A Schulman)
Date: Mon, 07 Apr 1997 20:55:02 EDT



On Mon, 7 Apr 1997 11:24:30 -0400 (EDT) Louis Proyect writes:

>The real problem with viewing groups like the SP or CP as "reformist" 
>and other groups like the SWP as "revolutionary" is that it elides the 
>more fundamental problem for socialist transformation. There is a
terrible
>dilemma in countries like the US, England, Japan and France, etc. If a 
>left group wants to have massive influence, it must *deliver the goods*
to 
>the working-class. Such goods include leading successful union battles, 
>ending racial discrimination, providing jobs, etc.
>
>In the pursuit of the delivery of such goods, there is a powerful 
>temptation to use electoral politics as a mechanism. In point of fact,
electoral
>victories of reformist parties have actually made the lives of English 
>and French workers *better*.
>
True. But let's remember that social democratic parties have generally
come to power in relatively peaceful times, when the union movement has
been strong and its members relatively class conscious. And that social
democratic reforms have generally been made when the leadership of the
capitalist class has either been not desperately opposed to such reforms
(such as social security or medical insurance), and when there has been
relative prosperity. Or, when the capitalists' leadership has been
weakened.

In most such cases I think that to ascribe the successful reforms to
social democratic leadership would be an oversimplification.  Note that
some social democratic reforms have been maintained without social
democratic parties in "power."  Sweden's level of welfare benefits is --
or was -- roughly comparable to the Netherlands', although the Dutch
Labor Party was in the government for only nine months during the 1978-89
period.  So the welfare state can't be considered exclusively a result of
social democrats leading a government.  (This is not to deny that strong
unions and/or an out-of-office social-democratic party may influence the
policies of capitalist parties leading a government.)  Even during the
Swedish SAP's 1976-82 period out of office, there was little roll-back in
social benefits.

>Now the paradigm of Trotskyist groups is to reject this model as 
>reformism. They position themselves as "revolutionary". However, they
almost 
>always lack the ability to deliver the goods and remain small and
isolated. 
>They see their smallness and isolation as a vindication of their 
>revolutionary politics, since their function is to preserve a rock-hard 
>revolutionary program on the shelf for those explosive times when the
workers are 
>good and ready to adopt them.
>
I think it was Trotsky who said "Sectarianism is not revolutionary.  It
is conservative."

What the Trotskyist groups have largely been unable to deal with is that
the "world proletariat" turned out to be far less homogenous than Marx
expected.  In Europe, the blue-collar workers who had the most to gain
through a revolution did not become a majority.  Thus, workers' parties
had to choose between being parties homogenous in their class (or, if you
like, "strata") appeal but sentenced to perpetual electoral defeat, or
parties that struggled for electoral success at the cost of diluting
their class orientation.

Furthermore, the workers of Europe freely chose the path to the reformist
welfare state, even though they were given many opportunities -- by
Communist Parties, Trots, etc. -- to opt for some other vision of
"socialism."  (The fact that most of these parties were sectarian and/or
ultra-left is not insignificant, of course.)

The ex-pro-Moscw-Communist parties are experiencing their own problems.
Look at the Partei des Demokratischen Sozialismus in Germany.  Their
members have been very concerned about how to handle the situation of
being "in power" in some city/region thanks to the resistance against
austerity policies, BUT not strong enough to defeat those policies on a
national level. If the government instructs you to keep a balanced
budget, how do you react? By trying to soften the impact of the cuts, or
refusing flatly to do the cuts and being thrown out, leaving the door
open for the right-wing?  Many people voted for the PDS wanting them to
soften the impact of the cuts as much as possible -- but how do you do
that? How is one to get mass mobilisations like the ones in France?

The PDS people, from what I've heard, had not thought these problems
through -- and that will, in practice, mean that they will drift
rightwards.  No use in moralizing over that, labelling them "reformists",
etc. The real problem is -- what strategy, which tactics do you propose?

I suspect in such situations left-wing socialists have to carefully pick
some areas and mobilize people around them.  But that real mobilization
is paramount. That means that in a lot of minor issues they'll have to
make compromises. To flatly refuse everything -- that only helps the
right-wing social democrats and bourgeois parties.

>This is the model of the SWP, a group that Jon identifies with 
>politically. 

I must've missed something.  When did Jon express his sympathies with the
excrable Jack Barnes?

>The task is to confont the capitalist class along all of its weak 
>points, to act in a consistently revolutionary fashion. By
revolutionary, I don't 
>mean insurrectional. I mean engaging in popular and working-class
struggles 
>on *their own terms* and attempting to sharpen the class lines while 
>doing so.
>
No argument here.

>So the vanguard in Lenin's view would embrace bourgeois progressives 
>in a fight with a royalist, the rights of artists to publish smut and
the 
>power of the academy to choose its own academicians. What this sounds
like 
>to me is a prescription for a militant Socialist Party that fights on
all 
>fronts in the most uncompromising and non-sectarian manner. I happen to
agree 
>with this concept of a vanguard. If this makes me a centrist or an 
>opportunist or a Menshevik, I wear the label proudly.

It makes you a left-wing democratic socialist.  How odd.

-- Jason
______
"For Marx, the theoretical axis of CAPITAL -- the core around which all
else develops -- is the question of plan: the despotic plan of capital
against the cooperative plan of freely associated labor." Raya
Dunayevskaya , *Marxism And Freedom* (1958),  p.92.



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