Date: Mon, 23 Mar 1998 08:03:11 +0100
From: Hugh Rodwell <m-14970-AT-mailbox.swipnet.se>
Subject: M-TH: Re-grope-ment on the left


There's been a trend out in reality that's recently been reflected fairly
strongly on the list for all the talk about atomization to be replaced by
the discovery of how much all the oppressed have in common.

Looks to  me like the non-Bolshevik left is waking up at long last to the
fact that the long-term crisis of capitalism that set in with the end of
the post-war boom in the early seventies (let's date its onset from the Tet
offensive to the defeat of the US in Vietnam) and whose inadequate
revolutionary mobilizations were initially met by the rightwing offensive
of democratic reaction (Thatcher, Reagan) and counter-revolutionary coups
(Chile, and later Iran), is provoking a resurgence of working-class and
popular resistance in spite of the abysmal anti-revolutionary leadership
provided by the Stalinists and the Social-Democrats.  It's a resurgence
without the traditional treacherous leaderships and against them. So does
the non-Bolshevik left provide leadership? No way. It fetishizes the
movement and treats it as a bandwagon to be jumped on.

The regroupment of the left taking place in France, for instance, is not so
much a regroupment as a re-grope-ment: no longer all alone in the dark, the
sceptical left can feel others around it, so it fumbles and gropes it way
to "unity" instead of "atomization". But it's all under external pressure,
with no drive of its own and no light of its own to see where it's going.

If sectarianism and despair were the main traps of the recently defunct
period, the current dangers are euphoric opportunism and popular frontism.

It's true that one step of real movement is worth a thousand programmes,
but the task of a revolutionary party is to make sure its programme and
organization take the movement forward and prevent it slipping back.

(It's a bit like the art of waxing skis -- the right wax doesn't make 'em
move of their own accord, but it makes a helluva difference to their
performance!)

Cheers,

Hugh




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