[PEN-L:28330] Re: reformism

[Waistline2@xxxxxxx]

In a message dated 7/22/02 10:04:07 AM Pacific Daylight Time, j.bendien@xxxxxxxxxx writes:


> As soon as you ask certified revolutionary critics of reformism what
> specific policies for social change they propose, what they specifically
> aim to do here and now (not just political positioning on issues of the
> day), chances are that they will list a number of reforms which they hope
> will have wider popular appeal.
>
> So the issue is never one of reforms or no reforms, or reform vs.
> revolution, but what kind of reforms and how they are campaigned for to
> advance revolutionary or socialist objectives.
>
> The real problem, which is scarcely addressed by the certified
> revolutionaries, concerns what policies and behaviours actually advance us
> towards a socialist society, and how socialists can gain and maintain
> hegemony over the liberals and conservatives (tendencies which you will
> have before and after a revolutionary overturn).


Reply

I am changing my language and style of presentation to acknowledge that we are not "certified" but an advanced intellectual sector on behalf of the working class in all its diversity.

Socialist objective at this phase of the class struggle are those advanced on the basis of the changes in the economy and this current phase i the decay of capital.  The fight for free drinking water that is clean is a revolutionary demand.

To speak about "before" and "after" a revolutionary overturn is legitimate, but a question of the revolutionary process as insurrection. Insurrection is a phase of the revolutionary process, that society undergoes in reformulating social relations to correspond with a new mode of production. We are simply not at this phase.

The revolutionary struggle for reform - say the anti-tax movement, involves the assertions of various class forces, but the working class has an opinion about the money taken out of its paychecks.

I can quote another part of Lenin from 1909 or "Theses On Fundamental Tasks"  but why? Anyone that accurately describes World Com's collapse on the basis of gambling for profit motive is a winner in America.  Pen-L is an advanced detachment of intellectual activity.  

The specific policy of the revolutionaries should be "victory of the working class in its current struggle."  

It like . . . the beat goes on man.

What scares the hell out of me is the demand to know what everyone thinks and is doing on every question, which in the last period lead to the demand for everyone to go to the factory. This division appeared as a so-called elitist revolutionary vanguard - which they were, and the so-called common people.

We cannot go back or forward to the factory system because it is historically obsolete.

All roads lead to the society of associated producers - more or less. (Molotov)

What about the revolutionary struggle for reformulation? It is a struggle because it is a socialized - collective,  process.

Thanks for letting me see myself and be myself.

"Thank you for letting me,
be myself  . . .  . again."

Sly and the Family Stone

Melvin P.