[Marxism] 1983 open letter from SA to the SWP

["Jurriaan Bendien" <andromeda246@xxxxxxxxx>]

The categorisation of the political spectrum inherited from the 1930s might
be summed up roughly like this:

ultraleft;-revolutionary left;-centrist left;-reformist left;-progressive
liberal;-centre right;-right;-far right.

On that basis one could neatly allocate every political actor in the same
way as we might classify productive and non-productive workers for the
purpose of social accounting.

But what if this whole schema does not really make sense of the political
realities of our time? What if it's a revolutionary event, if just one
progressive social reform is won?
What if the perception of what is revolutionary is really more subjective
than objective?

As far as my experience of it goes, most of the people who claimed to be
revolutionary were taken by surprise, sidelined or bowled over by
revolutionary events or mass radicalisations, suggesting that their urge to
conserve a revolutionary heritage got in the way of a real grasp of
political reality.

Jurriaan


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