A rapidly growing and highly concentrated industrial working class with the power to shut down production in factories, mines, and mills is what gave rise to the socialist movement, not the other way round, though its development was powerfully shaped by activists and intellectuals from within and outside the class. That precondition no longer exists: The dispersed working class displaced by automation in mainly service economies does not have the same capacity to shut down production nor the same corresponding social and political weight it once enjoyed as a movement.
Even when that movement was at its zenith, the prevailing impulse of most workers and their leaders was towards reform rather than the overthrow of capitalism. In the exceptional circumstances where social collapse in predominantly peasant societies produced social revolutions which impressively improved the living conditions of the masses, these were ultimately forced to revert wholly or in part to capitalist restoration in a world economy dominated by the more developed capitalist powers. Despite being the subject of endless debate on the left, there was no “correct" organizational model of a Leninist, social democratic, or anarchist type which could have overcome these historical constraints. Whether a more successful mass socialist movement will reappear in a new guise based on different social forces and new forms of organization or whether it was an historical moment coinciding with the rise and decline of the 19th and 20th century industrial proletariat is therefore very much an open question. That socialism is objectively necessary, however, remains a settled question for me, indeed an existential one, as it does for others on this list. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#41837): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/41837 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/119000131/21656 -=-=- 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/13617172/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
