Date: Wed, 24 Jul 1996 18:13:43 -0700 (PDT)
From: "James F. Miller" <jamiller-AT-igc.apc.org>
Subject: Cold war


   Louis posted this in response to my supposedly
overoptimistic take on the strength of the working
class today:

>Louis: The SWP has an uncanny ability to misread the class struggle. In
>the late 1970s, as the US ruling class was opening up its onslaught on the
>trade unions, this group projected the working-class as being on "center
>stage". Every strike foreshadowed larger class battles, even when they
>were defeated. When you look at the wreckage strewn about the American
>landscape (copper miners in New Mexico, P9, etc.), the only rational
>judgement you can make is that the capitalist class has made enormous
>gains.

   Maybe this is a case of whether the glass is half full or
half empty. Louis emphasizes the devastation of the labor
movement and popular struggles that has developed particularly
in the past 20 years or so. Certainly Louis is not wrong.
   But the other side of the question deals with the gains
that working people have made in two-hundred years of
struggle in all parts of the world. How far have the
capitalists been able to reverse these gains in social
benefits, democratic rights and social awareness?
   The SWP argues that the capitalists have to go a good
ways further in beating down the workers in order to
revive "prosperity." They can't succeed in this, no
matter how far they push the workers. But that doesn't
stop them from trying.
   Most of the gains of past struggles are preserved
to this day, though they are being undermined. To take
a recent example: the schools have not been resegregated,
and Black people still have the right to vote. Even
affirmative action is not defeated yet, though it is
being substantially weakened.
   Women still have the right to abortion and, in most
cases, retain the equal pay they won. But here, as in
other areas, their gains are under attack.

   Then Louis argued:

>If you want a proper analogy for the period we are passing through, the
>1890s is more appropriate when monopoly capitalism last enjoyed such power
>at its disposal. In a way we face tasks that are similar to the socialists
>of that period, especially in Czarist Russia. In the United States, we
>have scattered Marxists--probably numbering in the tens of thousands--but
>need a way of uniting them into a powerful party. These are the
>circumstances that Lenin faced.

   As far as the organized socialist movement is concerned,
we have a lot less of it now than in the 1890s. On the other
hand, imperialism is a lot weaker because of the many
anti-capitalist revolutions that took place and tore holes
in the international fabric of capitalism. 
   The capitalist class faces a much bigger problem when
it comes to taming the workers than it faced in the 1890s,
and it has less resources at its disposal.
   Do you think it will be possible for the capitalists
ro organize millions of workers to slaughter each other
in the coming decades? They had that strength a century
ago, but not now.

Jim Miller
Seattle
jamiller-AT-igc.apc.org


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