[Marxism] Class structure and class politics

["Jurriaan Bendien" <andromeda246@xxxxxxxxx>]

This analysis is a kinda interesting summary of some academic research, but
it's not something that can really provide much political guidance for
socialists beyond saying that there is a working class, and that it's the
revolutionary subject. For which you didn't really need any academic
analysis anyway.

There's very little specific discussion on the development of social classes
in relation to the forms of capital and sectors of economic activity. It
seems like the author doesn't really understand the point of class analysis
or what it means.

At the Worker's Action site, we read "Today the United Secretariat of the
Fourth International (USEC), because of its phony claim to Trotskyism even
while it has collapsed into reformism, is the main ideological obstacle to
overcoming the crisis of leadership."

With such a sectarian, deformed vision of politics, I doubt whether any
substantial political progress can be made beyond the constant testifying
and witnessing of revolutionism. Moreover, Workers' Action commits itself to
"defending deformed workers' states", as if that isn't reformism. Are there
any "deformed workers' states" left, by the way? Moldavia maybe? Cuba?

Imagine going to Cuba, and saying "I will defend your deformed workers'
state". You got to be joking. Most likely, you'd end up in a deformed state
yourself, as somebody rearranges your face.

Workers' Action says it "stands by the programmatic heritage of the Fourth
International, which was the political continuation of Bolshevik-Leninism,
before it degenerated into centrism in the Forties." In other words, they
have a totally idealist concept of what a political programme is, and how it
is formed.

In their deformed view, the true revolutionary programme was shelved in the
1940s (why not the 1930s? or the 1920s?) and they think they can now lift it
from the shelf, dust it off, and foist it onto the masses. This is
ridiculous, these people might as well pursue an entryist tactic into the
Tory party, where they could discuss the sad loss of traditional values in a
salon over a cup of Earl Grey tea - or join the recycling lobby of the Green
Party. Or, enroll for a course in genealogy with the Mormon Church, where
they'd be more likely to find some likeminded spirits.

Jurriaan



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