G'day Andy,
You write:
>I have myself begun to rethink the idea of reformism. I have a webpage
>titled "Reformist Socialism." This webpage has links to DSA and so forth.
>But what I really mean is "reformist capitalism," since DSA is not working
>to reform socialism, but to reform capitalism. But that is problematic in
>itself, because DSA does not intend to reform capitalism. Rather they seek
>to build a coalition with progressives in the Democratic Party and attempt
>to move towards socialism in an democratic evolutionary fashion. So they
>are actually "democratic evolutionary socialism." Just thinking outloud.
Marx demanded 'a political revolution with a social soul' (rather than vice
versa, in 'The King of Prussia'), through which we would be transformed in
concert with the transformations of which we'd be part (*The German
Ideology*), during which we would always demand and take more control over
our lives, until the proletariat controls the decisive productive forces
(the 'permanent
revolution' of M's address to the Communist League Central Committee in
1850), which can not happen but that our 'ideological forms' allow us to
perceive that our relations of production are no more in keeping with our
society's material productive forces ('Preface to a Critique of PE').
I mention some of these to show that the revolutionary process that
ultimately unfolds is not to be known in advance (the centrality of
blood'n'guts warfare is moot), and that it is not immediately likely
(whatever the objective conditions, the legitimacy crisis of our
institutions still has some way to go before their power over the
'ideological forms' through which we see our position and our possibilities
wanes decisively).
That said, to use Marx's geological metaphor (and I think the tectonic angle
a good analogy indeed - even if it does give comfort to all you
naturalist-dialectical materialists), may I ask 'where lies the salient
evidence that an earthquake is foreseeable?'. Does it (a) lie in the
potentials for world conflict that confront us? (b) the uncoupling of the
logic of international finance from that of production? (c) the most
systematic global pressure applied to the working class this century; (d)
the advent of transnational trading blocs that at once unite and fragment,
and (e) the sheer enormity of salient capitals, such that ownership and
control are becoming separated?
I ask because one could as easily see in these profound developments (a)
exacerbated nationalism and the spectre of species-suicide, (b) the
politically potent advent of 'stockholder democracy', through which the
class contradictions of Marx's time become internalised in so many western
workers (capital and labour confront each other within us), (c) yet more
nationalism, as intra-class proletarian competition, (d) an
Orwellian/Leninist conflagration of continental magnitude, and (e) a
narrowly instrumentalist world culture, run by a coordinated technostructure
a la JK Galbraith.
I would have thought such 'clear and present dangers' in what seem promising
times for profound world change demands of us that we get on to these
questions pronto. After all, what's an 'objective condition' if people
don't discern it (Sky Television ain't gonna help), or if an institutional
setting does not arise soon through which that discernment can be given
practical collective expression (there is no institutionalised integration
of leftism in the west).
Armed struggle, not necessarily along lines that might satisfy some of our
purists, seems a real possibility among the LDC societies. But not where we
are. Our job seems to be more to do with mainstream communications and
organisational integration, no? Sounds like revolutionary reformism to me
...
Cheers,
Rob.
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