Date: Fri, 16 Jan 1998 21:04:26 -0500
From: Yoshie Furuhashi <Furuhashi.1-AT-osu.edu>
Subject: Re: M-TH: Re: Soc-Dem politics and real movement


Hugh,

I don't think I ever implied the positive endorsement of soc dem politics
in my previous posts. When I said "something like authentic social
democracy," I was not speaking of *how* such a social arrangement came
about--I was only referring to *what* eventually came into existence, in
terms of the level of health programs, unemployment benefits, child care
facilities, etc. So I do not buy into "the old myth about reforms and the
welfare state coming from the goodness of bourgeois hearts and the fullness
of their purses after the war rather than as a purchase of survival time in
the face of an angry, demanding and revolutionary working class," if that's
what you're worried about.

I do think, however, that the current modes of workers' struggles are in
part shaped by what kind of life they have lived up to the present,
materially and ideologically.

I welcome your qualification of my comment on debt, privatized costs of
reproduction, etc.:
>This depends on the state of mind of the workers and the conditions of the
>class struggle. Many of the miners fighting the great miners' strike of
>1984-85 had huge debt loads etc, and it proved relatively simple to get
>help from local banks and other locally dependent institutions that
>preferred to have some prospect of getting their money eventually than not
>at all. In southern Brazil today many of the workers own cars or houses,
>but they're on a roll, and see strikes as a way of winning better
>conditions, not losing them.

But in terms of my assessment of the state of the U.S. working class, I'll
stand by my posts.

As for the "treacherousness" of leaderships, I don't think you are wrong,
but then again, is it simply because the working class were "duped," so to
speak, by the "treacherous leaderships" that they didn't become communist?
Any reforms under capitalism are limited and temporary, of course, but
nonetheless, in core capitalist countries there was a period when such
reforms were indeed possible. Isn't it those *material conditions* that
caused the working class to accept the "treacherous leaders" and to make a
compromise with capital and imperialism?

Now that those conditions are gone (though not totally), we can say that
the workers in the core capitalist countries are better placed, at least
materially if not ideologically, to make a break with capitalism. So it
makes more sense to speak of the lack of leadership *now* than in the past.

Yoshie





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