> I haven't seen anything lately by Perry Anderson - or, for that matter, by
> Eric Hobsbawm or Tariq Ali - that I haven't agreed with. But that's because
> I accept their view that the near simultaneous collapse of the USSR and
> political transformation of China - and the lift this has given the world
> capitalist economy - have shaken the Marxist characterization of the epoch
> as a revolutionary one to its foundations; that it is necessary to confront
> these wholly unanticipated reversals; that a materialist outlook remains the
> most reliable means of doing so; and that the exercise can provoke
> disappointing course adjustments based on less hopeful conclusions.
>
> This has brought them opprobrium from the faithful "optimists of the will"
> on the left who have tended to pass over the world-shaking developments of
> recent decades in the same way clerics, consciously or otherwise, steer
> clear of debating the existence of God because it can produce doubt. I do
> suspect Anderson may have an exaggerated respect for Federic Jamieson and
> postmodernism, but I haven't read widely enough in that area that I'd want
> to pursue the point. In any case, I can forgive Anderson most anything for
> his mid-70's classic, Considerations on Western Marxism, essentially tracing
> the idealist and voluntarist character of that part of the tradition to the
> early failure of the Western proletariat to fulfill its assigned role as
> agent of revolutionary change.
>
> MG
>
>
>
>
I haven't seen anything lately by Perry Anderson - or, for that matter, by Eric Hobsbawm or Tariq Ali - that I haven't agreed with. But that's because I accept their view that the near simultaneous collapse of the USSR and political transformation of China - and the lift this has given the world capitalist economy - have shaken the Marxist characterization of the epoch as a revolutionary one to its foundations; that it is necessary to confront these wholly unanticipated reversals; that a materialist outlook remains the most reliable means of doing so; and that the exercise can provoke disappointing course adjustments based on less hopeful conclusions.
This has brought them opprobrium from the faithful "optimists of the will" on the left who have tended to pass over the world-shaking developments of recent decades in the same way clerics, consciously or otherwise, steer clear of debating the existence of God because it can produce doubt. I do suspect Anderson may have an exaggerated respect for Federic Jamieson and postmodernism, but I haven't read widely enough in that area that I'd want to pursue the point. In any case, I can forgive Anderson most anything for his mid-70's classic, Considerations on Western Marxism, essentially tracing the idealist and voluntarist character of that part of the tradition to the early failure of the Western proletariat to fulfill its assigned role as agent of revolutionary change.
MG
************ I'm sadly compelled to agree with you. The problem I have with NLR is that, when the Soviet Union was collapsing, many of them thought not only that the collapse was inevitable (which it probably was), but that it was a good thing. For instance, Tariq Ali's 1988 book, "Revolution from Above" is dedicated to two Borises: Kagarlitsky and Yeltsin. He has since offered no reappraisal that I know of. As for Hobsbawm (who was an adviser to Neil Kinnock when he was purging Labor Militant), all his vast and impressive erudition seem to have led him to the conclusion that Communism was chimerical to begin with, and that the 20th century couldn't have turned out other than the way it did.
The main question in my view, however, is exactly how we should readjust our perspectives. The typical reaction of many disappointed Marxists is that we should set our sights lower, on piecemeal reforms rather than revolution. Many have gradually come to see electoral democracy as sacrosanct, and others, like Robin Blackburn, have discovered exciting new possibilities for "people's capitalism." But neo-reformism seems to me no more realistic than revolutionary socialism. Granted, we may be able to pick up a reform here and there (like the death-penalty moratorium in Illinois or putting a stop to the execution of children in the US, to name the two most significant recent victories), but it seems to me that the major systematic reforms of the 20th century, like the New Deal, civil rights or the European welfare state, were the byproducts profound systemic crises and war, coupled with the presence of a revolutionary challlenge, internationally and in many cases domestically. With no fundamental challenges to the system, it appears highly unlikely that those in charge of it will be inclined to concede major reforms because the radical intelligentsia have become more "reasonable" or "pragmatic". I sometimes wonder whether the new reformism is guided less by realism than by nostalgia for the good old days of the capitalist welfare state.
I also think there is problem apart from Soviet collapse, and its effects on popular consciousness, namely, the fact that what Marxists always regarded as the main revolutionary agency, the industrial working class, is becoming a diminishing quantity in the advanced countries, and fragmented and incohate in the areas to which globalization is relocating it. The industrial proletariat in the third world and immigrant ghettos of the West seems to exist as an almost privileged stratum amid a sea of unemployed and semi-employed peasants and slum dwellers.
So, given all this, can't you understand why the problem of perspective readjustment has become far too daunting for many? Isn't it easier to pretend that things haven't really changed, or that the entire enterprise of developing broad theortical perspectives is misguided, or that resistance is being carried on spontaneously by an ill-defined "multitude," for whom a choice of toothpaste brands can be an act of resistance comparable to a general strike? (A little polemical exaggeration here, but you get the idea.)
Jim
-------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <../attachments/20050427/025efbc4/attachment.htm>