Hi, Hari. I had in mind my experience and others in the Trotskyist movement. Trotsky defined the epoch as characterized by a “crisis of leadership” on the assumption that conditions were ripe for revolution and the workers were being held back by their Stalinist and social democratic "misleaders". It was on that basis that he formed the Fourth International in anticipation that the coming world war would usher in the world revolution led by his tendency. He was extrapolating from the Bolshevik triumph in WW I, and given the crises in the 30’s, his assessment of the period was not wildly off the wall. But he underestimated the capacity of capitalism to recover from depression and war and the staying power of the social democrats and CP's. Many who passed through or still belong to the Trotskyist movement continue to assume that the workers haven’t overthrown capitalism primarily because of subjective rather than objective conditions, ie. the continued domination of the social democrats (and now to a lesser extent, the CP’s) rather than the different circumstances in which we find ourselves.
To be clear, I’m not opposed to Trotskyists or ML-ists organizing themselves as disciplined groups. IMO it is still a superior form of organization than the endemic spontaneity of the current left since it provides activists with sustained activity and political education beyond sporadic appearances at demos and exchanges on social media, and it is an organizational form which, as the Bolsheviks proved, is indispensable when a revolutionary crisis erupts and the question of power is posed. I don’t know what your orientation is, but I am ok with those vanguard formations which recognize that working inside a reformist party is not unprincipled if it is the more effective way to reach and influence its members in the absence of a pre-revolutionary situation. I keep coming back to Lenin's orientation to the British Labour Party in that circumstance. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#29045): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/29045 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/104479559/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/8674936/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
