Left-Wing Wacko wrote:
>
> >
> No, that didn't answer my question. My question was what sort of crisis
> will break the stranglehold and cycle of the two current dominant capitalist
> parties that you spoke of? Like that that occurred with slavery, the civil
> war, and the Republican party coming on to the scene. What course of events
> will make it possible so that a party of the left can intervene and take
> some ground? Scenarios anybody?
>
> Sheldon
>
I don't know, and I think it can't be known. One can make various if/then statements about the future, but attempts at empircal prediction break down because of the power of contingency. Miles Jackson's quote from I. F. Stone draws its power from this very element of contingency in human affairs, presuming as it does that any given struggle (consider the Chartists, consider the Paris Commune) would probably be a losing struggle. My clumsy commentary on a post by Michael Pollack this morning raised a defense of lett divisions on the same principle: Why worry about fragmentation when we have no idea now what kind of effort today will make a difference tomorrow?
I will offer what may be a useful if/then propisiton: If at some future point leftists who ordinarily demand a scenario (i.e. promise of success) begin to flock to a particular struggle, then the probability of that struggle being at least in part successfulrises.
Re the Civil War & the birth of the Republican Party:
The nation had been two nations from the very beginning but the balance of forces had been such that neither nation gained by pushing the conflict to a resolution. The disturbances generated by the (very tiny) abolitionist movement,particularly as it reached a climax in John Brown, forced that confronntation by provokidng the Planters.
My insistence on contingency, I guess, is part of my reluctance to talk about speific agncy in thinking about the future.
Carrol