Yoshie Furuhashi wrote: > > > The problem is that, just as the material basis of liberalism has > disappeared, socialists have become, by and large, liberals. They > have no alternative ideology.
I think this is askew. We still have the same fundamental theory, that of commodity fetishism and the historicity of capitalism. But our revolutionary thought of the last century plus no longer has a grip on the present world. "Marxism" has been cursed from the beginning with a confusion of Marxism, what I call our fundamental theory, with the concrete revolutionary thought of the great socialist revolutionaries: Kautsky, Lenin, Ho, Trotsky, Luxemberg, Mao, Castro. I believe, that is, that the title of Draper's work, Karl Marx's Theory of Revolution, was profoundly misleading. There is _no such thing_ as a theory of revolution. Theory worthy of the name of theory must have a certain stability over fairly long periods of time. That is so of the theory of commodity fetishism and the historicity of capitalism. That theory will only change when the world changes -- i.e. with the coming of socialism or non-capitalist barbarism. (We are now living in a period of barbarism such as Red Rosa predicted, but it is barbarism within the parameters of capitalism.) Yoshie has been trying, since her first posts on Iran, to think through the present conjunction, but perhaps she herself has been not quite clear that what she is searching for is a revolutionary thought focused on our present condition, not a new or amended theory. Certainly those who got their knickers in a twist over her Persian Prince suffer from such obtuseness. Stan Goff and Joaquin Bustelo are I think making the same error when they can't distinguish (or seem unable to do so) between the fundamental imporance of class in the theory of any mode of production on the one hand and the demands of working out of revolutionary thought under specific historical conditions. Thus their empty chatter over class trumping race or race trumping class or other such pointless slang. Carrol
