Jim (Turbulo) wrote:
> I suspect Marv regards pessimism as a witchhunting term because he
> belonged
> at some point to a Leninist vanguard...
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I get the digest, so didn't see your post before I sent my last reply. It
was going to be my last, but I'd like to reply to some of your concerns.
About my background, I was in the League for Socialist Action, the Canadian
section of the Fourth International, and then the Revolutionary Marxist
Group, which was aligned to the Mandel wing of the FI, in the late 60's and
early 70s. So I'm familiar with most of the difficult issues concerning
reformism you raise. Like many of us, I've wrestled with them most of my
adult life, and I don't pretend to have resolved them definitively.
Discussions like these assist the process.
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> Would the Bolsheviks have seized power had they foreseen the ultimate
> consequences of their actions? Probably not, but do you think asking them
> to see 75
> years into the future is humanly reasonable? Revolutionaries have the
> right to
> expect that their efforts have a possibility of success. But the line of
> work
> they're in dictates that they be interested in possibilities as opposed to
> probabilities, and a fighting chance is all history will ever offer those
> who
> seek to alter its course. With the old order in Europe collapsing around
> them,
> the Bolsheviks of 1917 were given a fighting chance. If future
> revolutionaries
> demand greater certainty as a precondition for action, the one thing we
> can be
> certain of is that there will be no revolutions.
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This is the fourth time I'm having to refer someone back to my original post
a) expressing my agreement with the view that it is not humanly possible to
predict the future, and b) given the insurrectionary mood, not only in
Russia, but throughout war-torn Europe in 1917, the seizure of power by the
Bolsheviks was a well calculated gamble in which I think I would have taken
part.
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> Others have said here that the October Revolution enabled the
> industrialization of a huge backward peasant country, inspired revolutions
> among subject
> peoples shaking off the Western yoke and contributed indirectly the New
> Deal and
> the Western European welfare state. Are not these some of the greatest
> achievements of the twentieth century, central to the entire notion of
> historical
> progress? And are not precisely these achievements, and this very notion
> of
> progress, imperiled in the post-Soviet world?
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See my last reply.
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> My quarrel with Ernest Mandel, Tariq Ali, Eric Hobsbawm, Daniel Singer and
> so
> many others is their failure to appreciate the stakes in the Eastern-bloc
> upheavals of the 1980s. By 1988, when Tariq Ali wrote "Revolution from
> Above" it
> was abundantly clear to anyone with eyes to see that Boris Yeltsin had no
> intention of ushering in a socialist renewal, as it was equally clear,
> even from
> 1981, that Poland's Solidarity had completely embraced Reagan, Thatcher,
> John
> Paul II, and the free market with all its miracles. Yet all the
> above-named
> socialists continued to cheer Yeltsin and Walesa on, substituting, I
> believe,
> their own lofty hopes for realities on the ground. I think those that are
> alive
> owe us a reassessment, if not an apology.
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But we can't predict the future, can we? My recollection is that the four
Marxists you mention above all supported the mass-based reform movements in
Eastern Europe, not only because they thought their democratic demands were
legitimate in themselves, but because they thought these movements were
developing in a revolutionary direction - the overthrow of the bureaucracies
in the so-called "workers' states" and their replacement by socialist
democracies. They were encouraging what they thought was a promising
"opportunity" to restore Soviet power won in 1917 and subsequently lost when
the revolution was isolated. I thought they were too optimistic - there I go
again! - and that the direction in both cases was towards capitalist
restoration. In this, we agree. But you are wrong when you say this was
"abundantly clear to anyone with eyes to see". There were many on the left,
both inside and outside the Eastern bloc, who shared this hope. While the
clownish duo of Yeltsin and Walesa later proved easy pickings for Western
interests and the nomenklatura, Gorbachev and the other reformers cannot be
dismissed so lightly, and in 1988, they were still in the drivers seat and
headed, at least arguably, towards loosening economic and political
constraints within the framework of the existing system. For these reasons,
I don't think an "apology" is necessary on the part of those who supported
the East European reform movements, although, as you know, I do think
"reassessments" are in order when things don't turn out as projected, to
learn what went wrong and why.
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> As for Marv's claim that the times offer us no choice but to be
> reformists, I
> could answer--correctly--that Lenin, Trotsky, Luxemburg etc. didn't become
> revolutionaries only when the revolution broke out.
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Of course not, but they lived in a revolutionary period which extended well
back before 1917 - coincident with the rise of the industrial proletariat
after 1848. What weight do you give to the nature of the period? Is there
some compelling obligation to be a "revolutionary" in meetings drawing a
dozen aging radicals and another dozen wide-eyed students? The same as when
the system is in crisis, the ruling class is split, the masses are
organizing, a left is developing in the mass reform parties, the unions, the
other social movements, and the new mood is reflected in the popular
culture? It is easy to be "revolutionary" in these times, not only because
there is little if any risk involved, but because many of us raised in this
politically cocooned society don't seem too have much notion of what a real
revolution would look like. I'm reminded of Senator Bentsen's retort to Dan
Quayle when the names of Lenin, Trotsky, and Luxemburg are invoked to
justify what is called "revolutionary" activity in this period.
------------------------------------
> Marv thinks that today's new, non-industrial working class is likely to
> become just
> as radicalized in response to a profound crisis of capitalism as did its
> 1930's predecessors. I'm not as sure of this as I'd like to be. Big
> industrial
> concentrations, it seems to me, presented the possibility of wide-scale
> collective
> action, which smaller workplaces could emulate. But when all or most
> workplaces are small and remote from one another, it would seem much more
> difficult
> for workers to get a sense of social identity and collective power,
> especially
> in the face of an omnipresent consumerism and a big and essentially
> reconciled
> middle class. Nor am I as certain that, in the absence of a visible
> socialist
> movement, hard times will necessarily drive today's workers to the left.
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I'm not as sure of this as I'd like to be either. And I share your view of
how the more fluid organization of work and living in contemporary society
militates against the collective sharing of grievances and collective
action. My political barometer is my apolitical friends, neighbours, and
relatives. They help me assess the popular mood. I can't imagine them simply
rolling over if they lose their jobs and homes and sense of physical
security - the essential characteristics, it seems to me of a systemic
crisis - or that they will move to the right rather than the left when they
discover the need for political action. I believe most people are like that,
at least in the cities. I'm reasonably confident necessity will encourage
them to combine and seek solutions to their distress, if it comes to that.
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> I crave the sense of historical certainty that imbued revolutionaries in
> the
> past with the confidence to act as the Bolsheviks did (and should have).
> But
> such certainty eludes me, as I think it must elude any intelligent person
> attempting to make sense of history's late, unanticipated twists. The one
> thing I
> remain sure of, however, is that the huge setbacks of recent decades have
> not
> made capitalism any nicer or more amenable to reform than it ever was. If
> anything, it has become less so. Reformism doesn't become more plausible
> simply
> because there is no clear revolutionary answer. Only such an answer can
> save us,
> and I hope we can come up with one, if not before I check out, at least
> before
> the human race does.
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I don't want to discourage you further, but you will, I'm afraid, expire
well before "we" come up with a "clear revolutionary answer". You must be an
Hegelian. I don't believe history moves on the basis of Great Ideas. If we
are to move beyond reformism at all, I think it will depend on larger
economic, social, and political events outside our control, and we will be
doing very well if, in that eventuality, we simply learn how to properly
read and respond to them.
Marv Gandall