At 4:54 PM -0500 12/10/04, Doug Henwood wrote:
Too often, Marxists think capitalism is just one quarter away from
serious, even terminal, crisis.
At several points in history (the revolutionary wave of 1848, the
"long depression" after 1873, the Russian Revolution, the period from
the Great Depression to the beginning of the Red Purge and the Cold
War, and the late sixties and early seventies), probably a lot of
socialists believed that capitalism was in crisis and that they could
soon help usher in a new socialist stage of history, and it made
sense for them to believe so. In-between those crises, I don't think
they did.
In any case, I doubt that many of today's remaining Marxists actually
believe that "capitalism is just one quarter away from serious, even
terminal, crisis." I can't think of anyone in Solidarity, the
Freedom Road Socialist Organization, the International Socialist
Organization, etc. who thinks like that. If capitalism were close to
such an earth-shaking crisis, why bother supporting Kerry (like FRSO)
or Nader/Camejo (like the ISO and Solidarity)?
--
Yoshie
* Critical Montages: <http://montages.blogspot.com/>
* "Proud of Britain": <http://www.proudofbritain.net/ > and
<http://www.proud-of-britain.org.uk/>
