"..The word Revolution, which we Socialists are so often forced to use, has
a terrible sound in most people's ears, even when we have explained to them
that it does not necessarily mean a change accompanied by riot and all
kinds of violence, and cannot mean a change made mechanically and in the
teeth of opinion by a group of men who have somehow managed to seize on the
executive power for the moment. Even when we explain that we use the word
revolution in its etymological sense, and mean by it a change in the basis
of society, people are scared at the idea of such a vast change, and beg
that you will speak of reform and not revolution. As, however, we
Socialists do not at all mean by our word revolution what these worthy
people mean by their word reform, I can't help thinking that it would be a
mistake to use it, whatever projects we might conceal behind its harmless
envelope. So we will stick to our word, which means a change of the basis
of society; it may frighten people, but it will at least warn them that
there is something to be frightened about, which will be no less dangerous
for being ignored; and also it may encourage some people, and will mean to
them at least not a fear, but a hope ("How We Live and How We Might
Live," *Signs
of Change* [1888]).
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: marx.laboratory <[email protected]>
Date: Wed, May 7, 2014 at 12:17 PM
Subject: Revolution - the only solution , Socialism - the only alternative
path
To: Marx Laboratory <[email protected]>
*Monthly Review editorial, **May 2014*
Revolution - the only solution
Socialism - the only alternative path
*Monthly Review* celebrates its sixty-fifth anniversary with this issue.
Today the causes for which the magazine has stood throughout its
history--the struggle against capitalism and imperialism and the battle for
socialism as the only alternative path--are more pressing than ever. Indeed,
so great is the epochal crisis of our time, encompassing both the economic
and ecological crises, that nothing but a world revolution is likely to
save humanity (and countless others among the earth's species) from a
worsening series of catastrophes.
This may seem like a shocking statement; ironically, not so much because of
its invocation of the visible threat to humanity's existence, but rather
because of its reference to revolution as the only solution. Would it not
be better, one might ask, to concede to the conventional wisdom and call
instead for a global reform movement, as far less frightening in its
implications than outright revolution? Here we cannot do better than quote
from the great artist, writer, and socialist, William Morris:
The word Revolution, which we Socialists are so often forced to use, has a
terrible sound in most people's ears, even when we have explained to them
that it does not necessarily mean a change accompanied by riot and all
kinds of violence, and cannot mean a change made mechanically and in the
teeth of opinion by a group of men who have somehow managed to seize on the
executive power for the moment. Even when we explain that we use the word
revolution in its etymological sense, and mean by it a change in the basis
of society, people are scared at the idea of such a vast change, and beg
that you will speak of reform and not revolution. As, however, we
Socialists do not at all mean by our word revolution what these worthy
people mean by their word reform, I can't help thinking that it would be a
mistake to use it, whatever projects we might conceal behind its harmless
envelope. So we will stick to our word, which means a change of the basis
of society; it may frighten people, but it will at least warn them that
there is something to be frightened about, which will be no less dangerous
for being ignored; and also it may encourage some people, and will mean to
them at least not a fear, but a hope ("How We Live and How We Might
Live," *Signs
of Change* [1888]).
To advocate for revolution in the above sense, not as a fear but as a hope,
obviously does not mean a rejection altogether of the process of legal
reform, but rather the abandonment of the usual limited, non-starting,
counterproductive reforms, offered up by the system, which are meant to
close off the future and to defend the existing order, making real change
impossible: what in socialist theory is known as *reformism*. All actions
initiated by popular forces today should rather be aimed at "a change in
the basis of society." Revolution, as Rosa Luxemburg observed, is
distinguished from reform not so much in representing a different
*method*of change, or in occurring over a different duration, but
rather in its
constituting a distinguishing *moment* of the struggle. ("Social Reform or
Revolution," in *The Rosa Luxemburg
Reader*<http://monthlyreview.org/press/books/pb103x/>[Monthly Review
Press, 2004], 155-60.)
Such a strategy of social transformation representing a distinct
*moment*of struggle is imbedded in the Review of the Month by Fred
Magdoff and John
Bellamy Foster in this issue of *MR*, which closes with a discussion of
feasible actions that could reasonably be advanced today--if we were to
treat our most urgent social and human problems as our *highest priorities*,
disconnected from the logic of capital accumulation. Similarly, in *What
Every Environmentalist Needs to Know About
Capitalism*<http://monthlyreview.org/press/books/pb2419/>(Monthly
Review Press, 2011) written by the same authors, a two-stage
strategy of ecological revolution was outlined--the first consisting of what
realistically could be attempted now, if conformity to the rules of the
system were not seen as the primary constraint on action; the second
addressing the far greater transformations that would need to be carried
out over the long-term to create a society of substantive equality and
ecological sustainability, i.e., socialism.
Real revolutionary transformations will emerge most readily today, as has
been the case for more than a century, out of struggles in the periphery of
the capitalist system, where the material conditions that people must
confront are more severe due to centuries of imperialist
exploitation--compounded now by the fact that climate change is hitting the
global South the hardest.
In contrast, within the United States, at the very center of the world
empire, the obstacles to the emergence of a powerful movement for
revolutionary change are in many ways more formidable. Here the working
class has historically been divided off from itself and from most of the
rest of the globe by the legacy of centuries of chattel slavery, and by a
world-imperialist role growing out of an earlier history of colonial
expansion, consummated by global hegemony and multinational-corporate
domination after the Second World War. Nevertheless, here too the way
forward is clear. What is needed is the rebuilding of the labor movement on
an anti-capitalist, internationalist basis; the militant resurgence of all
of the new social movements of the 1960s (particularly the radical
struggles for race and gender equality and gay rights); and the
transformation of the environmental movement into a powerful ecosocialist
resistance. None of this is conceivable of course without a drive for
democratic control over the cultural apparatus (communications and
education). Moreover, due to its strategic presence within "fortress
America" at the epicenter of the imperialist world system, the U.S. left is
uniquely charged with making the struggle against imperialism and war the *very
substance* of the movement.
Where *MR *itself is concerned, we are proud to affirm today, sixty-five
years after the creation of the magazine, that we stand for the same
revolutionary aspirations for which we have stood from the very beginning.
As Albert Einstein stated in the very first issue of the magazine: "I am
convinced there is only *one *way to eliminate these grave evils [of
capitalism], namely through the establishment of a socialist economy,
accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social
goals.... Clarity about the aims and problems of socialism is of greatest
significance in our age of transition. Since, under present circumstances,
free and unhindered discussion of these problems has come under a powerful
taboo, I consider the foundation of this magazine to be an important public
service" ("Why Socialism?<https://monthlyreview.org/2009/05/01/why-socialism>,"
*Monthly Review* 1, no. 1 [May 1949]: 14-15).
Adolph Reed's important, if controversial, article, "Nothing Left," in the
March 2014 issue of *Harper's*, lamented the decline of an earlier dynamic
left in the United States centered on a militant labor movement and the New
Deal coalition. We were therefore pleased that on the first page of his
article he singled out *Monthly Review* as one of a very few holdouts
amongst publications in the rightward shift of a U.S. left that has ceased
to be "left"--that is, has largely severed itself from working-class
struggles. Reed concludes his article by arguing that "labor may be weak or
in decline, but that means aiding in its rebuilding is the most serious
task for the American left."
We agree. And we would like to add that on the front line of this struggle
today are K-12 educational workers who are engaging in strikes and various
forms of resistance across the country against the privatization of the
public school system. Precisely because teachers, supported by parents and
community members, are now fighting not just for their jobs, but also for
children, society, and community, they constitute, in our view, the heart
of a new social unionism both in the United States and in many other
countries. We encourage *MR* readers to get involved in various ways in
this struggle, which is now taking the form of a united opt out from
testing movement. See http://unitedoptout.com.
--
You cannot build anything on the foundations of caste. You cannot build up
a nation, you cannot build up a morality. Anything that you will build on
the foundations of caste will crack and will never be a whole.
-AMBEDKAR
http://venukm.blogspot.in
http://www.shelfari.com/kmvenuannur
http://kmvenuannur.livejournal.com
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