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On 2014-03-11, at 8:29 AM, Louis Proyect wrote: > > On 3/11/14 8:17 AM, Marv Gandall wrote: >> the extension of the vote and development of the welfare state; > > Huh? The last 40 years at least has been about the dismantling of the welfare > state. What planet have you been living on? Thanks for this; I hadn't noticed. I was addressing the reasons for the unexpected resilience of capitalism despite forecasts of its imminent demise by Marxist theoreticians over the past century and a half. On 2014-03-11, at 7:50 AM, Louis Proyect wrote: > > > > On 3/10/14 11:28 PM, Marv Gandall wrote: >> Fair enough. But do we support all mass movements without exception - >> even ones led by popular right wing groups and parties often >> viciously opposed to the values and institutions historically >> supported by the left? > > There was no "mass movement". This was a spontaneous revolt of people fed up > by corruption and poverty. A mass movement would be something like the civil > rights movement in the USA that has developed organically over decades or the > antiwar movement. People poured into Maidan square and the well-organized and > powerful ultraright used the opportunity to muscle out the left. Whatever you want to call it, the Maidan _______ successfully toppled a government and replaced it with one of its own. I don't accept for a minute that the masses who poured into Maidan square and the western Ukrainians who supported them were predisposed to "fascism". They were apolitical, and for the most part still are. This was and is the source of the ______'s weakness. It's been vulnerable to manipulation and control by the far right groups and the conservative parties who appeal to and reinforce its ethnic identification with the traditional Ukrainian language, culture, and religion. The ultraright was able to dispatch the tiny left with such ease because it tapped into the unfortunate ethnic divisions which are threatening to tear the country apart, not because it had more and better organized street fighters. This is what really underlay the attacks on the corruption and economic policies of the Yanukovych government and its west Ukrainian Russian-speaking base. The previous Yushchenko and Tymoshenko governments which drew for support on the Ukrainian-speaking Western part of the country were equally subservient to the oligarchs and did little to raise the living standards of the people, but this was generally overlooked by the crowds in Kyiv and elsewhere in their eagerness to restore their own bourgeois ethnocrats to power. Alas, a sign of the times. ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
