[PEN-L:8783] Divisions on the left

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

Michael wrote:
>The left took an awful long time recovering from the splits caused by WW I
>also.  You are absolutely correct.

Actually, they never really did recover. The Third International and all
the various Maoist and Trotskyist formations it spawned viewed the 1914
betrayal as unforgiveable.

In reality this was a mistake. Even though the German Social Democrats
supported the war and even murdered Luxemberg and Leibknecht, a couple of
years later the Saxony branch of the party was prepared to join the
Communists in a revolutionary bid.

During the 1980s there was an experiment with healing these rifts, mostly
expressed through alliances in Central America. The European social
democracies were actually much more helpful to the Sandinistas than the
Soviet Union. The FMLN/FDR in El Salvador enjoyed the public affiliation of
Guilliermo Ungo, a principled social democrat.

I suspect that the Balkans war is symptomatic of a deepgoing rift that is
inevitable given the behavior of social democratic parties in Europe. They
basically have adopted the Clinton agenda, just as the Christian Democrats
and Tories bought into Reaganism in an earlier period. Furthermore, when
you take the thing apart, what is revealed is the same basic economic
program, which some call "neoliberalism" while old fogies like myself call
imperialism.

There will be a political reaction to all this. The German PDS will
probably grow. The Greek left is bound to grow as well. The biggest problem
for the Marxist left is how make the kind of political points that were
made in 1914, when we are still operating in a general environment of
capitalist triumphalism. Perhaps the only antidote to that would be a wake
up call from a protracted economic slump or a bloody imperialist war. But
right now, we are dealing with a situation where a Newsweek cover ponders
the problem of why "you aren't rich like everybody else," while Nato's
hobnailed boots straddle Kosovo in wait for the signal to go after the next
piece of Yugoslav real estate.


Louis Proyect

(http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)