>
>As Paul Baran and Paul Sweezy wrote in... was it 1965?: "The highest
>form of resistance is revolutionary war aimed at withdrawal from the
>world capitalist system and the initiation of social and economic
>reconstruction on a socialist basis.�[T]he revolutionary peoples
>have achieved a series of historic victories in Vietnam, China,
>Korea, Cuba, and Algeria. These victories�have sown the seeds of
>revolution throughout the continents.�It is no longer mere rhetoric
>to speak of a world revolution: the term describes what is already a
>reality and is certain to become increasingly the dominant
>characteristic of the historical epoch�"
>
So I started rereading Baran and Sweezy's _Monopoly Capital_ and
could not stop...
...capitalism's basic law of motion, temporarily thwarted [during
World War II] soon resumed its sway. Unemployment kept steadily
upward, and the character of the new technologies of the postwar
period sharply accentuated the disadvantages of unskilled and
semi-skilled workers.�By the end of the 1950's the real state of
affairs could no longer be concealed: it was impossible to continue
to believe in the existence of a meliorative trend�
... one need not have a specific idea of a reasonably constructed
automobile, a well planned neighborhood, a beautiful musical
composition, to recognize
that... the rock-and-roll that blares at us exemplif[ies] a pattern
of utilization of human and material resources which is inimical to
human welfare...
The history of recent decades is particularly rich in examples of the
substitution of authoritarian for democratic government in capitalist
countries: Italy in the early 1920's, Germany in 1933, Spain in the
later 1930's, France in 1958�
And then continued down my bookshelf and ran across these great
contributions to analysis from _The Theory of Capitalist Development_
and _The Present as History_:
"The monopoly of capital becomes a fetter upon the mode of
production.� Centralization of the means of production and
socialization of labor at last reach a point where they become
incompatible with their capitalist integument.�The knell of private
property sounds. The expropriators are expropriated." This is,
however, not so much a prediction as a vivid description of a
tendency...
We must conclude that, because of the differences in their underlying
economies, the socialist sector of the world would [after World War
II] quickly stabilize itself and push forward to higher standards of
living, while the imperialist sector would flounder in difficulties...
>From the standpoint of economic science, the political leadership in
the Soviet Union is acting as the agent of the working class. No
relation of exploitation exists between controllers and workers.�The
real issue is one of general interests and objectives, which are
prescribed by the structure and form of social relations as a whole.
In this sense the objective of those who direct the Soviet economy
can only be production of use values which corresponds in every way
to the interests of the working class. We might, therefore, say that
the working class is the ruling class in the Soviet Union...
And worst of all:
The publication in 1952 of Stalin's _Economic Problems of Socialism
in the USSR_ would make possible today a more satisfactory reply.�In
the light of [Stalin's] explanation�I would like to amend the
statement which Mr. Kazahaya criticizes.�[The amended statement]
conveys my meaning more accurately than the original wording and is,
I think entirely in accord with Stalin's view...
