>
>Marx and Engels theorized that capitalist accumulation, industrialization,
>and the development of the mass worker (who is not only formally but really
>subordinated to capital, and who could be hardly said to exist in Marx's
>time) would make revolution. This involved two kinds of statements by Marx:
>first, the generic version, familiar to all; second the historical version,
>which has it that the working class is needed to support the bourgeois
>revolutions against the old orders in Europe, but that working class needs
>and demands can't be met within the parameters of bourgeois demands and
>goals, hence a proletarian revolution could or would come about in the
>course of bourgeois revolutions radicalized by their working class
>supporters. In both versions, "working class" is the independent variable,
>so to speak, and "revolution" the dependent variable. (Although of course
>there is a rich set of dialectics between the two.)
Lenin produced a variety of reasons for the leading role of the working class. Some historically predictive in terms at least of overall probability; some contingent on particular historical developments, such as the means of production being concentrated in very large industrial enterprises, where thousands of workers were exploited in almost barracks like conditions, ready to become a virtual army.
> In terms of the changes in
>class structure, China after 1979 looks to me alot like Russia from
>1928-1938 (first two five year plans).
Lenin emphasised out how small a proportion of the working force of Russia, was proletarian. I think the points made here by Jim O'Connor are broadly correct. They suggest the thesis that one reason for the fall of centralised socialism was that it was premature in terms of the development of the relations of production. And was in fact an inappropriate leap from certain primitive communists methods of peasant organisation to would-be socialism.
The alternative strategy would be a mixed market economy of cooperatives, as Lenin suggested in On Cooperation 1923. He spoke in terms of a generation perhaps being needed. To apply it now, we have to consider a century until there is a unified world political system. It would still be possible to make major inroads by global reforms even while a market in goods and services develops, hopefully partly on cooperative lines.
Chris Burford
London