<HTML><HTML>I suspect Marv regards pessimism as a witchhunting term because he belonged at some point to a Leninist vanguard, in which it often functioned, along with "pragmatist, "impressionist" and "non-dialectical", as an epithet of high opprobrium. But I propose that, in this discussion, we steer clear of psychology and adhere to Spinoza's dictum, quoted frequently by Trotsky: "One must neither laugh nor weep, but understand." 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. Failure to seize power would not have resulted in a period of capitalist development under parliamentary democracy, but rather in the orgy of repression that would have been necessary to disabuse the Russian masses of the then nearly universal notion that they were running the show. When history knocked at their door, the Mensheviks hid under their beds. The Bolsheviks jerked themselves awake and answered the knock. 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? 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. 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. But this would be the easy polemical answer. They also believed that, beneath all the twists and turns of history, the "old mole" of revolution was burrowing. The mole was the proletariat, expanding in number and becoming ever more conscious of its power. 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. 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.     Jim </HTML>