Colin Danby: > >The obvious argument (Louis might want to say more on this) is that >something has happened to make the social democratic project unstable or >untenable. Either something broke down at the political level, or the >nature of capitalism has changed (this is the implication of much of the >"globalization" argument we hashed over last month). Capitalists will >no longer play ball (i.e. maintain any level of capital investment) >unless you agree to raise the profit share. > The social democratic project is as dead as the Soviet Union. There have been oceans of ink devoted to the fall of the Berlin Wall, etc. What needs discussion is the bankruptcy of social democracy was well. There is a related cause. Both movements are geared to horse-trading with the international bourgeoisie. In the days of Reagan and Thatcher, the bourgeoisie stopped horse-trading and the "socialist" bureaucracy failed to make adjustments. The results were the collapse of the USSR and the decline of the welfare state, Sweden probably being the most dramatic example. A reforged socialism is needed. It must reject the sort of sectarianism that pops up on this forum and on the Spoons Marxism forums as well. There is nothing more repellent that the sort of "Marxist-Leninist" posturing that some people affect like a costume at a Halloween Ball. By the same token, we should not kid ourselves into believing that the traditional social democratic project has a future. This will be much a harder belief to rid ourselves of because people's livelihood is tied up with the treasuries of foundations, trade unions and universities that provide a fertile soil for reformism. A new generation of socialists will come along. The contradictions of capitalism will be too sharp for this not to happen. That is why PEN-L and other Internet forums are so important. It allows discussion between like-minded leftists who as yet have no organization on a world scale to represent them. Surely, as capital becomes more relentlessly global in its drive for profits, the left will have to become internationalist as well. This, of course, was the original hope of Marx and Engels who described exactly such a predatory, globe-straddling capitalism in the pages of the Communist Manifesto in 1848. Louis Proyect
