Re: [Marxism] If Marxism is a Science then itsPredictions ShouldMatter...

[Einde O'Callaghan <einde@xxxxxx>]

rrubinelli wrote:
> Comrade,
>
> Yes, it happened in Indonesia and Argentina, and Chile, and Spain 60
> years before.  And all those events were--not lateral shifts, but CLASS
> WAR, pre-emptive counterrevolutions.  The events in the USSR were no
> less class war, differing in that the counterrevolution erupted after a
> revolution, after the decay of the "barricades,"  the initial property
> forms, the initial social relations established in that revolution.
Class struggle, even class war indeed. But the definitive defeat of the
Russian working class wasn't in 1989-1991 but 60 years earlier. There
was state property, but the working class was as excluded from access
and control over this state property just as much as it is excluded from
access to private property under Western capitalism.

This is why the working class didn't come to teh defence of the regime,
because the regime was just another bunch of exploiters. The imperatives
of capitalism - accumulate, accumulate, accumulate! - had been imposed
on the regime for decades by military competition from the Western
imperialist powers. that in the course of teh decdades the working class
had been able to wrest a number of important reforms isn't significantly
different from the situation in the Western imperialist countries. And
ultimately the increasing economic integration of the Eastern Bloc into
the world economy tightened the screws as capitalism went into crisis.
Eventually the old increasingly inefficient methods of extracting the
surplus from the working class went into crisis and just as with many
major corporations in the West massive restructuring and cutbacks were
necessary to restore the profitability of teh "enterprise".

that the working class resisted this restructuring, just as it did in
many Western corporations, isn#t surprising. It was defending the gains
that it had maade from the ruling class in previous decades, but I don't
think you can provide me with one example where teh working class,or
even a section of teh working class, went into struggle to defend the
existing political system or the associated organisation of the economy.
The workers didn't feel it was their state and sat on their hands.

the restructuring of teh economies of teh former Eastern Bloc is by no
means complete.just as in the West attacks on working class living
standards are continuing. this is the reality of teh class struggle,the
class war today. But nostalgia for the old system isn't something that
any section of the working class shares, despite the wishes of some
socialists based in the Western imperialist countries who feel that they
know better what the interests of the workers in the former Esatern Bloc
are or were than those workers themselves. To me that sort of attitude
is real elitism and contempt for the working class - far more pernicious
for socialist advance than alleged adherence to Zinovievite norms of
organisation, the great bête noir of this discussion list.

I'm glad that a basic "state capitalist" orientation to the former
Eastern Bloc has served to insulate me to a large extent from this sort
elitism.

However, it seems to me that this debate isn't going anywhere and is in
danger of degenerating into a sectarian slanging match - indeed when I
read some of the descriptions of my political tendency posted by some
participants I feel that it has already become a sectarian "slag the
state caps" session in which almost every hoary allegation against the
"Cliffites" from the history of the last half century has been raised,
although I'm still waiting with bated breath for the Korean War to
surface - so I doubt if there is any purpose in continuing with any
discussion on the question here.

In the final analysis the question will only be resolved "on the
barricades" in the course of the future development of the class war.

Einde O'Callaghan

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