I don't know whether you recall, but on the other list I have been mentioning for a while what you say below, that is, in a sense we are in Kautsky's ultra-imperialism. Lenin's famous critique of Kautsky was not so much that imperialism couldn't develop to a different level of transnational consolidation, but that such would not "automatically" evolve into socialism and world peace, as you mention below.
I'm not sure what it does for us to know this. What is still necessary for socialism is for the overwhelming masses of people, the working class, to self-organize and take state power; and over a period of time to abolish private property in the basic means of production.
It is difficult to see how this will occur without a political party leading it, as of course, Lenin and Marx, and Marxists since them have worked for and done.
The transnationalization of monopoly seems to make the slogan, "Workers of the World , Unite ", truer than ever. So, in this era, perhaps some working class parties will represent workers from more than one country. One, united European party seems a consideration given the EU. This would certainly be an International of the countries that were the main focus of Marx and Engels attention. In a way, this new phase of imperialism repeats the earlier step of the dialectical spiral of history of pre-imperialism in which Marx and Engels participated in the First International.
Charles Brown
Detroit
>>> Chris Burford <cburford at gn.apc.org> 01/08 2:18 AM >>
A pity because at first sight the challenge about Kautskyism would be a
very interesting one. We are seeing with the Euro a great consolidation of
national capitals and any explanation of this would sail close to theories
of ultra-imperialism. There might for example need to be a vigorous
argument that really the euro is the DMark and this is centralisation of
capital around German capitalism.
Maybe others can thrash out this question of Kautskyism better than LP can. I certainly would like to hear the arguments tested, and be tested by them myself.