[Re ex cathedra tone: over a year now of tennis elbow from keyboard use. Typing 2-finger now - hence terseness]
Jim Devine wrote: > > 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? I think it's _central_; almost everything else leads to or explicates these principles. The 1st is the thread thru the baffling complexity of capitalist social relations and is linked to the premise of the material reality of relations. Ignoring it was probably what misled Jim Blaut into mechanical (moralistic) conception of capitalism & its origins. Recognition of both, but particularly the latter (or of the analysis that encompasses it), leads to uncerstanding of role of contingency within capitalism. [More later -- lose my train of thught with this slow typing,] [clip]> 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 seems to me this is more of an observation, nearly a truism. I don't think it can organize practice under concrete conditions. For example. what part of the working class forms the revolutioinary surge at a particullar time and place? That can;t be therized in advance; it keeps changing. And how do those revolutionary elements find each other. Successful revolution seems an intersection of (a) concrete conditions which sneak up on us from behind and (b) (very abstractly) a method of communication among workers that fits that particular conjunction. What Lenin called "revolutionary theory" was, essentially. a sense of how that intra-class communication could be achieved in russia of his day. That sort of "sense" of immediate actuality, of timing, can't be theorized or expressed in any set of general (& non-tautological) rules. It likely applies under all class modes > of production and all other types of domination. It is not just a > normative principle. It applies under capitalism, and that is related to the historicity of capitalism: barbarianism or socialism. Pre=capitalist modes of production had no such inner drive. They did not revolutionize life every day as capitalism does. They were subject to change, but not change of any particular form. It would be quite untrue to say of any past mode of production: capitalism or barbarianism. In principle they could go on forever, waxing and waning. It's pretty clear that there is no principle of self-liberation immanent in a peasantry. (Peasants mostly need to be left alone as much as possible.) > Working-class collective liberation can't be won by "condescending > saviors," by benevolent dictators of the proletariat. True, but I don't think it adds up to much more than telling us what won't work. I doesn't, for example, tell us much of how to relate local struggles to a national struggle. > 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 See remarks on Lenin above. Participation requires shared understanding which requires what I'm calling "a method of communication" suitable to the particular conjunction. And the methods worked out for Cuba in the 1950s and 1960s wouldnt work anyplace else. I think we (Marx) have a pretty good grasp on the fundamental dynamics, under all conditions, of the Capitalist Mode of production; I don't think there is any such "fundamental dynamic" of revolution. (Trotsky might have thought there was; many of his followers definitely do. We call that dogmatism.) I gotta get off the jeyboard. Carrol (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.
