> until capitalism is abolished, any reform the working class win will
> inevitably have contradictory consequences, which are "functional" to
> capitalism.
Indeed, how could it be otherwise? Marx's warm support of the victory of the 8 Hours Act was in the context of a clear analysis of the class forces that had allowed it to pass, as well as those that had fought for it.
>The first step toward a practical opposition to the Right in a war of
>positions is to mobilize people who already are opposed to the Right but
>have been politically inactive for a host of reasons. Build your base,
>and move forward from there, while in the process re-defining terms of
>political struggles (including symbolic elements of them). That's the only
>practical way to break the functional trap, in my view.
One of the reasons for inactivity may be the lack of a sufficiently clear analysis, which as Yoshie implies, will always have to be dialectical. It must distinguish which reform, at which time, has primarily a revolutionary, or primarily a reformist, aspect. They almost always have both.
Any would-be revolutionary who tells you otherwise is a mechanical idealist, not a dialectical materialist. That is why IMO the struggle for a progressive, and ultimately revolutionary, line of advance, has to involve drawing distinctions with left opportunist, as well as right opportunist, positions.
Chris Burford
London