On 2013-05-29, at 9:52 AM, c b wrote:
> "Revolutionary" parties _can_, of course, play the same role. I have
> suggested that the Party we need will be much like the SPD of Kautsky,
> Luxemburg, Bernstein, et al. That was a revolutionary party, but it
> also was a place for the likes of Bernstein. Probably, as I've
> suggested before (following an argument of Andre Gorz) that a mass
> working-class movement has to achieve most of its goals within about a
> 5-year framework, and then (for reasons Charles Post has outlined)
> tends to subside.
>
> Carrol
>
> ^^^^
> CB: Ok , however, the German SPD did not achieve revolutionary goals,
> so why is it an example of a "revolutionary" party ?
Yes, and I'd take your point a step further. The SPD not only failed to make a revolution, it never sought one, though there was an active revolutionary Marxist minority within its ranks. It was instead a massive and very effective reform party, the leading party of the Second International up to the eve of World War I. Like the British Labour Party and the other social democratic parties, it originally called for the nationalization of the commanding heights of the capitalist economy by peaceful, gradual, parliamentary means but, when the utopian nature of this project became evident, it subsequently settled for a share in the administration of the state in exchange for reforms which did not threaten the existing system of power and property relations. Marx criticized the SPD as far back as the 1870's for its Lasallean reformism, an impulse which took wings following Bismarck's subsequent decision to legalize the SPD, which became the template for other ruling classes worried about the growth and direction of the new workers' movement.
Of course, even a mass reformist party like the old SPD, only nominally committed to socialism, would indicate a much higher level of working class consciousness and struggle than that which exists at present.