[WS:} I would leave them in. They have value as historical records. As I read at least some of them (cf. Brenner, Moore, Rueschemeyer et al,) they talk about specific historical conditions that led to specific outcomes - but these cannot be generalized beyond the countries and times in which these conditions and outcomes existed. In other words, far from being a universal or global trend, socialism was a historical accident produced by particular arrangements of social forces during industrialization, which are unlikely to repeat themselves (perhaps history repeats itself only twice, maybe trice :)) I tend to think the same about democracy in general, but that is an altogether different subject.
As to the rest of your post - ditto.
Wojtek
On Tue, Nov 9, 2010 at 12:50 PM, Somebody Somebody <philos_case at yahoo.com>wrote:
> Marvin: But you're right, there has been over the past three decades a
> qualitative decline in class struggle in the West...
>
>
>
> Somebody: I hear this a lot, with the implication that the class struggle
> continues in the oppressed global South. But, it's not true. The left is
> almost completely absent from industrializing East Asia for instance. This
> is a remarkable fact that is not fully appreciated. Imagine if Europe in
> it's period of transition from agrarian to industrial society had been as
> quiescent as China and South-east Asia are today. Actually, scratch that,
> it's impossible to imagine. All we can do is rip out the pages of the
> history books dealing with the German SPD, Lenin, Swedish Social Democracy,
> World War II, France in 68 and Italian Eurocommunism. Of course, this
> demonstrates conclusively that history determines consciousness more than
> material conditions - the failure of Mao, perceived or otherwise, outweighs
> the massive joining of workers in factories and urban centers and of
> peasants being pulled into wage labor.
>
>
>
> Across the world, the the new proletariat of the emerging nations is far
> and away less active and self-conscious than the original European working
> class was. Wojtek is right to be so definitive, the class struggle is over,
> full stop. Maybe it'll reemerge someday, but you'd have to be generous to
> even say there's a glimmer of that day arriving. The most we see are workers
> leading rear-guard defensive struggles, and precious little even of that. As
> for the Latin American left, it's amounted to very little in retrospect -
> and it's clearly in decline right now, which the left broadly recognizes
> given the steep drop in discussion devoted to those countries in the past
> few years. Anyway, it's obvious that people like the late Nestor Kirchner
> and even Evo Morales would have been considered very middle-of-the-road in
> the heyday of the class struggle in the 20th century. Meanwhile, Cuba's
> about to hold it's next party congress to announce the liquidation of
> socialism in that last bastion of a dying faith. Well, not dying, it's
> dead.
>
>
>
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