Another great article by Sam Gindin and Leo Panitch makes a similar point.
It's also from MR, but the MR website seems to have something else where it should be (http://www.monthlyreview.org/1102gindin.htm), so I took the liberty of posting it here: http://scandalum.wordpress.com/rethinking-crisis/
"Not all of the left retreated. Amongst those who stubbornly hung on to their ideals, many seemed to find it equally necessary to hang on to the notion that the structural crisis of American-led capitalism continued and was, if anything, getting worse. Declarations of imminent crisis were tactically linked to the left’s capacity to mobilize others: those who argued that capitalism was far from being on its last legs were seen as not merely wrong, but even betraying the cause.
"Yet the repeated-and mistaken-chorus of a breakdown around the corner has hardly helped the cause we share. As the left’s dire predictions failed to materialize, this eventually produced a loss in credibility and a confusion in strategic orientation. The question that should have been faced was not how to mobilize against a capitalism on its knees, but against a capitalism that was still in the process of revealing the singular dynamism that Marx discerned so clearly in the Communist Manifesto."
Mike
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