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.
Carrol Cox wrote:
I think this is askew. We still have the same fundamental theory, that of commodity fetishism and the historicity of capitalism.
is that all there is?? how many other Marxian principles did you consider and throw out? were you speaking _ex cathedra_ at the time?
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[s], 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.
According to Draper (and I agree), Marx's theory of revolution can be summed up by the notion that the liberation of the working class can only be truly won by the working class itself. It's the principle of "collective self-liberation" and it has "a certain stability over fairly long periods of time." It likely applies under all class modes of production and all other types of domination. It is not just a normative principle. Working-class collective liberation can't be won by "condescending saviors," by benevolent dictators of the proletariat. It can't be imposed from the outside. The recent attempt by the so-called "neo-Trotskyists" (neo-conservative ex-Trots) at "revolution from the outside" in Iraq was the bloody farce that proved once again what the previous bloody tragedies had proved (e.g., in Eastern Europe, where Stalin's armies imposed socialism from the outside). This principle applies even in non-revolutionary situations under a lot of different situations. The Cuban revolution, for example, has achieved a lot of liberation of the Cuban people not because of the smart and principled leadership of Fidel Castro. Rather, it's because of the participation of the Cuban people in decision-making (partly as a result of the Bay of Pigs invasion, which mobilized people). The limitations of that revolution mostly arise from the fact that the PCC has maintained a monopoly of political power (not that they had any choice here, given continued imperialist blockade, assassination attempts, sabotage, etc., etc.) Not surprisingly the Cuban revolution was more one of national liberation than popular-democratic liberation. This principle applies to reform and reformism. Without a mass backbone (the labor movement, the anti-war movement, the ecological movement, the women's movement, etc.), the Democratic Party degenerated into a slightly more farsighted version of the GOP. (On foreign-affairs matters, the DP was like this during almost all of the post-WW2 era.) In Western Europe, where the mass base was much larger and deeper, the "liberal" parties were much more social-democratic and more successful. (In places like France, the mass base of the CP provided a backbone for the social democrats.) More successful at managing capitalism, yes, but also more successful at distributing benefits of capitalism to working people. This principle also applies to other sorts of liberation, e.g., gender-based, ethnic, etc. It's only when people take control of their lives that their viewpoints can be expressed democratically and successfully implemented in practice. This principle is a replacement for those of liberalism. Liberalism -- as I understand it -- relies on notions of inherent human rights. But human rights have to be won via struggle (or luck, but we can't rely on that). And the wider, deeper, more conscious, more democratic, the popular struggle, the more successful to winning of human rights.
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.)
before that, we also had socialist barbarism (e.g., rule by Stalin, Mao) alongside capitalist barbarism (imperialism). -- Jim Devine / "Young people who pretend to be wise to the ways of the world are mostly just cynics. Cynicism masquerades as wisdom, but it is the farthest thing from it, because cynics don't learn anything. Because cynicism is a self-imposed blindness, a rejection of the world because we are afraid it will hurt us or disappoint us." -- Stephen Colbert.
