Date: Sat, 24 Aug 1996 12:24:28 -0400 (EDT)
From: Louis N Proyect <lnp3-AT-columbia.edu>
Subject: Re: P.B. Proyect squirms some more


On Sat, 24 Aug 1996, Louis R Godena wrote:

> 
> The notion that western workers have "sold out" to capitalism is not very
> popular at Monthly Review or the Socialist Register--entities which,
> apparently,  resonate with Louis P in much the same way that Combray and
> Balbec did for Proust--but they reflect, more or less, the attitude of
> non-Western Communists in our own era.    MIM's crude historicism and
> self-serving banter need not deter us from examining what,  for Marxists, is
> perhaps the most pressing tactical problem of our age.
> 

Louis: Truer words have never been spoken. The central question before
socialists is how the working-class of the advanced capitalist countries
can become revolutionary. This question is of more urgency than it has
been since the Great Depression, in the aftermath of Clinton's attack on
welfare. Questions of the SLP in England, the Labor Party here, etc. These
are the decisive questions, but we need an absolutely calm and rational
space to discuss these problems out in a comradely fashion. I am for as
open a debate as the kind that marked the Russian social democracy at the
turn of the century, but I also expect participants to rise to that level
within their personal limits. This medium must stop functioning as group
therapy for maladjusted individuals or as an outlet for every minor-league
crank on the left.



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