Justin,
To try to restate more clearly some of what I am trying to get at below, I think the workers' movements that exist today are just about as "non-existent" as the "non-existence" of Marxist parties. The Marxist parties in the U.S. are as connected to the working class as TDU, New Directions etc. In other words, the Marxist parties are drastically reduced, but so are the rank and file militant movements in labor.
On the consciousness of workers' movements, I would say in Marx's day, with Marxism new, of course, one could not expect the mass of workers to have Marxist consciousness. But after 150 years of worldwide broadcast of Marxism, a number of socialist revolutions, a working class movement has to meet a higher standard to be worthy of the name. Many organizations ostensible for workers fail the test of being part of the workers' movement just as much as existing parties fail to be Marxist parties.
I don't think that it has been demonstrated that Marxism has no popular grip in China or Viet Nam, or less than in the past. So, still more than 1/5 of the earth's population are in states led by Marxists. I don't know that in the past the whole populations claimed allegiance to Marxism.
I left out a "not" when I wrote >What exactly is your reasoning that " formal" Marxist parties will have a
>flow after this ebb ?
I meant "will NOT have. Why do you reason there won't be a flow of Marxist parties after this ebb ?
Charles
>
>^^^^^
>CB: Greg, In the sense you and Justin are discussing, there are "no" more
>"workers" movements either. Opportunistic trade unionism is not a workers'
>movement.
The trade union movement is all the workers' movement that there is any more. Now, I don't think that the opportunistic, accommodationist leadership of much of the union movement is very impressive even on its own terms. But there is a rank and file union militants movement--here in this country represented, e.g., by Teamsters for a Democratic Union, which was successful enough that its reform leader had to be smashed by the feds, New Directions in Auto, Hell on Wheels in transpprt, Justice for Janitors, the reform movement in the United Mine Workers. etc. In Chicago a reform caucus has taken over the Chicago Teachers Union. This rank and file movement is not socialsit, but it's radical, grassroots, and the real thing.
>A "workers' movement" has to have some type of Marxist consciousness.
Marx didn't think so. The workers make no theories, he said.
>
>So, you two just dismiss the Cuban and Viet Namese Communist Parties as
>non-existent, or what ?
>
Might as well be. Forty years ago a third of earth proclaimed allegience to Marxism. Now there are a handful of holdover states, and of those, it's only in Cuba where self-identified Marxism has any popular grip, not in Vietnam or China.
>What exactly is your reasoning that " formal" Marxist parties will have a
>flow after this ebb ?
>
I don't think they will.
jks