Re: [Marxism] The "turn to industry" of the 70s and 80s

[Bhaskar Sunkara <bhaskar.sunkara@xxxxxxxxx>]

Louis Proyect:

“What is 3rd worldism? Sending delegations to Sandinista Nicaragua?
Guilty as charged.”

Joaquin:

Finally, there is Bhaskar's reference to groups with a proletarian
orientation not falling "into the trap of third worldism." I'm not sure what
Bhaskar means by this. In fact, I haven't a clue. But if it means carrying
out a lot of solidarity work wikth struggles abroad, generally I think that
is not a "trap" but a good thing.
-----------

I was mostly referring to the segments of the new left in the 1960s that
enjoyed Maoist sloganeering. “Power comes from the barrel of a gun” is a
crazed statement when the other side has all the guns. In general I believe
the left of this era placed too much faith in the socialist character of
anti-imperialist revolt in undeveloped world. Socialism has not resulted
from any of these revolts. (We will save the debate on Cuba, where my stance
is more nuanced than the “state-capitalists” for another thread).

Lots of the 1960s radicalism took place in a time when capitalism was
bestowing relatively shared prosperity and seemed indomitable in the
industrial countries. So obviously the revolt that happened in Western
Countries wasn't really against economic conditions, but rather against
alienation in society, racism and imperialist war. It was a reaction to USA
society as it was, and as such displayed nihilistic tendencies (the Weather
Underground).

I do agree that I misrepresented strains of the 1960s left. When I was
formed along with a few other undergraduate activists at GWU, the Democratic
Left last year we reread the Port Huron Statement and I was shocked at
how... well conservative it was. There was lots of mention of alienation,
some mention of exploitation, but it didn't see that far to the left of the
mainstream, and obviously the statement was drafted at a AFL-CIO summer
retreat, and written by many members of the League of Industrial Democracy a
group with ties to the UAW. The rabid support for the war and the reluctance
of some (not all) in the mainstream labor movement to support Civil Rights
obviously gave great reason for large segments of the left to decide that
for the moment the most important thing they could do is advocate against
imperialism and for a Vietnamese victory.

That's not third worldism--- but the result of looking for emancipatory
solutions to end the capitalist epoch in Mao's agrarian authoritarianism,
Castro's clique's state accumulation, Arab national socialism, focoism, etc
etc has been showed to be quite misguided throughout the 20th century.

The solution has to lie in the proletariat in the developed world.
Substituting peasants, students, etc for the task won't cut it. Why the
working class in America does identify as a class, much less act together in
class struggle, is worth examining, and it is very important to recognize
the weak condition of class identification and polarization in the United
States.
As on this level the ISO obviously recognized the conditions in the 1980s
when they moved to the campuses and devoted a lot of work towards the
campaign against the death penalty.

They begged to differ when the SWP in the UK said that “the 1990s were the
1930s in slow motion”, but despite their relative strength compared to other
far left grouplets, (they bring out a thousand+ to Socialism Events,
ISReview and Socialist Worker are very well funded), they are still not even
close to being a force in U.S politics.
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