Ted Morgan's book becomes vital inthis context: he explains how that defeat occurred.
Carrol
On 9/22/2011 11:24 PM, Gar Lipow wrote:
You left out the most important thing - the existence of left mass movement with specific demands. Without that no amount of crisis will drive the system to adapt even mildly left solutions. If faced with a truly radical left mass movement with real power, even a mild crisis could be used to extract some concessions from the ruling class. when Doug describes the degeneracy or decadence of our ruling class or power elite, I think an argument could be made that a lot of what they do today they always would have done in the absence of any left threat, and that to the extent they have changed goal and character, it is due to too long without a threat from the left. I'm guess I"m making an argument that a strong and vibrant left movement plays an essential role in capitalism.and is part of the capitalist system. When capitalism defeats the left to the point that(as in the U.S) there is not left but only leftists, or as in Europe a left exists, but one so weak it can't do much more than leftists in the U.S. it destroys something vital to its own long term survival.
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