Re: ripening contradictions?

[Doug Henwood <dhenwood@xxxxxxxxx>]

Tom Walker wrote:

>In many respects, the contradictions were "riper" in the late 1970s and
>early 1980s. Recall gold soaring to $800 an ounce, prime interest rates of
>20%, the fall of the Shah in Iran, the Sandanista victory in Nicaragua,
>uprising in S. Korea, big corporate bankruptcies, the threat of third world
>loan default, Jimmy Carter's "malaise" . . .
>
>Those ripening contradictions turned out to be mulch for reaction and
>retrenchment rather than fodder for revolution. The current set of ripening
>contradictions shouldn't be a surprise for anyone who follows the rhythm of
>ripenings. As the preacher said, there's nothing new under the sun.

Different contradictions now from then. Those contradictions gave rise to
the "neoliberal" retrenchment, a strategy that now may be stumbling. To put
it crudely, in the late 1970s, the working class and the Third World had
gotten too powerful and needed to be cracked over the head. They were,
quite successfully. Whether that "solution" has now run its course is worth
thinking about.

As I said in response to Bill Lear, I'm deeply allergic to diagnosing
crisis; the left has been wrong too many times on this. On the other hand,
this very reluctance to see crisis (compared with the hysterical tone of
much 70s left discourse, and even mainstream discourse) may in itself be
telling.

>So, comrades, what is to be done?

World revolution, now! Of course. I know because I read Workers Vanguard.

Doug