On 2010-11-09, at 12:50 PM, Somebody Somebody 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.
I didn't say nor imply that "the class struggle continues in the oppressed global South." I mentioned, as a partial explanation for the decline in class struggle, that capital had moved production to the developing world. But you've used it as a jumping off point to remind us again that the once mighty international labour and socialist movement is dead. Really, how many of us do you think need to be reminded of that when the evidence has been all around us for the past 30 years?
Do I think I detect a celebratory note in your emphatic statement that "Wojtek is right to be so definitive, the class struggle is over, full stop"? While I agree there is nothing comparable anywhere to the clearcut class battles of the West which defined an epoch from the early nineteenth century to the the mid-twentieth, the conflict between the classes has not disappeared, but has assumed milder and, in some cases, distorted forms. The Chinese and South Korean working classes, for example, are not as quiescent or as lacking in class consciousness as you suggest is the case in Asia, and conflict between employers and workers continues to be expressed in more muted form in the developed countries in the defensive battles of unionized workers to retain their jobs and benefits. Revolutionary Marxists no longer lead trade union or anti-imperialist movements, except perhaps in Nepal and parts of India, but these national movements of peasants and workers against local Western-backed elites are still present, even though their underlying class character is mostly disguised by the green flag of Islam.
I'm glad you hedge your bets about the end of history. I also don't rule out the that a higher level of class struggle may "reemerge someday". I wouldn't want to bend the stick back too far the other way by pointing to the current militant struggles of the Greek and French working classes as harbingers of such a revival - they are still defensive in nature, while sustained class struggle trade unionism requires an expanding economy in which jobs are being created rather than lost - but their examples should serve to further temper hasty and certain conclusions about the death of all class struggle in the modern era.