[lbo-talk] what's left

Julio Huato juliohuato at gmail.com
Mon Apr 26 19:14:09 PDT 2010


Dennis Claxton wrote:


> Well, Robespierre died before Marx was born
> but what about now?
>
> I remember seeing tape of a famous speech
> Felipe Gonzalez made, I don't know if he was
> already Spanish prime minister or not, but he
> was saying emphatically "we can be socialists
> without being Marxists." You can't argue
> against that but do you think it was a good
> move?

As I said before, conditions change, the line shifts. Felipe and the PSOE come from a history of struggle against fascism, Franco's dictatorship, and a failed coup d'etat. But people and groups, entire social formations, may betray their origin. Again, the criterion is "fighting on the side of the oppressed." If you stop doing so and do the opposite, i.e. work to maintain the status quo, then you're out of the left.

As I said, adjudicating who's in, who's out, etc. is not easy. It takes work, analysis, and the struggle itself to sort it all out.



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