[PEN-L:33680] Re: Weinstein on Lipset & Marks/Why Socialism Failed in US

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

> Sunday, December 17, 2002
>
> It Didn't Happen Here
> Why Socialism Failed in the United States
>
> By JAMES WEINSTEIN
> Special to the Times
>
>
>      After 1900, when Eugene V. Debs first ran for president and the
> Socialist Party of America was founded, the Socialists faced yet
> another, perhaps more daunting, problem: the peculiar structure of the
> American political system. Ours is a system that militates against the
> success of third parties.

But when things get hot enough, 3rd parties are possible. Our problem is
that social democrats like Weinstein and the CP, who should have thought
in class terms, actively fight against 3rd party initiatives. If the CP
had put its organizational muscle behind a Labor Party in the 1930s, the
US political landscape would look a lot different today. We still have
the same fight on our hands, if you read Ronnie Dugger's "Ralph, Don't
Run" in a recent Nation Magazine.


>      This brings us back to Marx's idea that "the country that is more
> developed industrially shows to the less developed the image of their
> future." Lipset and Marks quote this remark as if it were a comment on
> politics, but Marx meant it as a statement about the developmental logic
> of capitalist society. And though Marx believed that capitalist cant
> development was a prerequisite for socialism, he had little to say about
> how the political movement for socialism would or should develop.

Of course not. He was an historical materialist, not a fortune-telling
moralist. Marx was far more interested in the Paris Commune, which
despite not abolishing capitalist property relations, indicated how
workers could run society.

> He did
> believe that Britain, or more likely the United States, would be the
> first to achieve the level of technological development and the
> experience of democracy required to make possible a peaceful transition
> to socialism. So far, history has not proved him wrong in this regard.
> Indeed, one might argue that the United States has achieved this level
> of development and awaits the growth of a left to appreciate that
> potential. If that is so, then perhaps the title of Lipset and Marks'
> book might better have been "Why Socialism Hasn't Happened Here Yet"
> rather than "It Didn't Happen Here."

This is a mechanical understanding of Marx's views. Technological
development and parliamentary democracy have little to do with preparing
the way for socialism. Socialism's midwife is proletarian revolution,
which can only be the result of profound social and economic upheavals.

> James Weinstein is the author of "The Decline of Socialism in America,
> 1912-1925" and the founding editor of In These Times.

He is also the benefactor of his wife's ample fortune which allows him
to run a money-losing vanity publication like "In these Times".


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