Charles:
> Here's a more specific possibility. What kind of crisis will we suffer
when
> we lose the war on Iraq ?
Wojtek: I think none whatsoever, most people will not even notice and those who do, will forget five minutes later after the next reality show starts. The US was routed in Vietnam and what happened? Nothing for a while, and then we had the 'Reagan revolution.'
^^^^ CB: But isn't this empirically inaccurate ? I think Doug and others have produced evidence of ruling class concerns that the 60'/70's did represent a threat of revolution. It is exactly the relatively rapid radical shift of the national situation and mood between the 60's/70's and the Reaganite era we are still in, that shows how quickly things can shift. They can rapidly shift back now to a period of new forms of : radical reform, "urban unrest" , "third world" revolutions, a new communist threat, Yippies, Peace movements, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Angela Davis , League of Revolutionary Black Workers, White Panthers, etc.,etc. How quickly we forget,and how hard the bourgeois propagandists work to wipe out our collective memory of recent times with radical potential.
The bourgeoisie turned to forms of fascism in the early fifties and in the sixities and senventies with McCarthyism and COINTELPRO and the like.
^^^^^^^^
While you mentioned WWI - what propelled the development of fascism in Germany was not being routed in WWI but the Great Depression or rather the combination of the two.
^^^^ CB: I'd say it was a number of things, and among them was German defeat in WWI.
^^^^^
However, Great Depression the US had the opposite effect - it brought the New Deal - perhaps because the ruling class was unprepared (albeit their tried to organize a coup, but failed).
^^^^ CB: Exactly. And the ruling class is now preparing for the eventuality that another Great Depression might bring a rise of the U.S. working class again.
The ruling class rules by being more class conscious than the classes it rules,including learning the class lessons from history.
^^^^^^
In sum, unless there is a major recession cum international setbacks in the pipes, I am not going to loose much sleep over the possibility of a martial law in the US of A.
Wojtek