[lbo-talk] Greece says Goodbye to Democracy

[Carrol Cox]

I am interested in consciousness that makes a material difference, or that
at least promises to make a material difference. At the present time, in
both Europe & the U.S. "parliamentary" or "electoral" consciousness is in
fact evidence of serious absence of consciousness that  has any significant
relationship to "changing the world." _Nothing_ is going to make any
immediate or short term changes advantageous to working people; in fact
Angel's quotation from Luxemburg is useful in defining contemporary
political consciousness: It consists in readiness, even eagerness, to engage
in battles in which defeat is probable, if not certain. Probably the most
advanced working-class political consciousness in the U.S. today is embodied
in the struggles of students in California college & university campuses.

Your sense of political consciousness is mere playing verbal games, and
seems to me to reflect almost total despair of significant improvement in
the conditions of u.s. workers.

Carrol

-----Original Message-----
From: lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org [mailto:lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org]
On Behalf Of Marv Gandall
Sent: Tuesday, January 31, 2012 9:38 AM
To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Greece says Goodbye to Democracy

On 2012-01-31, at 6:31 AM, Carrol Cox wrote:


> The evidence on electoral preferences has nothing whatever to do with
> political consciousness. Political consciousness is measured by
> participation in or support of mass movements.

Wrong. Political consciousness is measured by parliamentary as much as by
extra-parliamentary activity. The classical Marxists were as attentive to
the shifting vote tallies of the German SPD, Italian and French SP's, the
British Labour Party, etc. before the First World War, as well as the
parties supported by the Comintern after it, as they were to the incidence
of strikes, demonstrations, and other forms of mass action engaged in by the
working class. 

Lenin's controversial advice to the fledgling British CPGB to "enter" the
Labour Party was based on the LP's electoral strength, which he used as a
register of the backward political consciousness of militant British trade
unionists relative to their continental counterparts. Later Marxists did not
assess the level of working class consciousness in the 30's and 40's solely
with reference to industrial militancy while dismissing the sharp increase
in votes for Communist and socialist deputies as having "nothing whatever to
do with political consciousness". Careful attention was paid equally to the
electoral fortunes of the established bourgeois parties as a measure of both
mass and elite confidence in the bourgeois-democratic political system,
notably during the collapse of the Weimar republic and rise of fascism. 

Your one-sided understanding of political action is consistent with
traditional anarchist and other ultraleft notions of the sort precisely
targeted by Lenin in WITBD, a polemic you profess to much admire. You're an
equally enthusiastic fan of the Black Panthers, but one supposes, given your
remarks above, that your enthusiasm would not extend to Bobby Seale's 1973
mayoralty campaign in Oakland when he garnered nearly 40% of the vote.
Presumably, this represented an unnecessary detour into the electoral arena,
again a wholly meaningless indicator "having nothing whatever to do with
(the) political consciousness" of Oakland's black community at that time. 

Those who participate in the mass movements which you support don't draw an
artificial distinction between their activity in the streets and political
action aimed at influencing or gaining state power; each arena is seen as a
means of gauging their popular support and of realizing their demands.
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