Re: [Marxism] Workerism

["Joaquin Bustelo" <jbustelo@xxxxxxxxx>]

Carl Webb says: "I agree that workerism is not a good strategy for
organizing but if not the workingclass, then which class is the most
revolutionary class?" 

Under current conditions, and the sorts of conditions that have prevailed in
the United States for the last few decades, there is no revolutionary class.
The postulate of the Comintern's Second Congress theses, extended to our
day, would be that for the U.S. working class to regain its revolutionary
potential, first either the back of imperialism as a system would have to be
broken, or the place of the U.S. within the world imperialist system lost. I
guess one could also posit a catastrophic collapse of the capitalist economy
or some other similar radical breakdown of the social order, for example, a
U.S. attack on Iran which Iran is able to answer by nuking New York, London
and San Francisco. But barring those sorts of Deus ex machina scenarios, the
statement is simply that the U.S. could not be anything like the kind of
imperialist power it is today for the working class to manifest its
revolutionary potential.

I am not 100% certain this is absolutely true, for in this sort of
analytical framework I do not see any way to explain the radicalization of
the 1960's, which clearly was a qualitatively different KIND of
radicalization than that of the 1930's. And if such a radicalization with a
relatively high degree of autonomy from underlying material conditions is
possible, then I do not see how to exclude a priori that --given that sort
of cracking of bourgeois political-ideological hegemony-- the working class
will NOT cohere as a class and ALSO radicalize. For while privileged, it is
also nevertheless exploited and oppressed. But that, at any rate, did not
happen in the 60's.

Joaquin 


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