> To accept Mark's argument as conclusive is to replace struggle with > aimless ranting at > evil. No it isn't. It's to say that the pursuit of reforms is the pursuit of chimeras. It may be good for proletarian self-esteem and eclat but apart from this collective therapy, it's useless and even counterproductive. > Lear's "I'll do > such things as ...." No you won't, not without a working class army > raised and hardened in > the struggle for social justice and workers' rights. There is no evidence whatever, in any country or at any time, that workers with well-developed trade unions, rights movements and social-democratic parties ever mounted, or were capable of mounting, a real challenge to the rule of capital. Quite the contrary, wherever well-organised workers' movements existed, the result was always either war, economic depression or fascism. These are very basic facts of history which we ignore at our peril. Today we face the additional problem that not only has a century and a half of reformism defanged the Western workers' movement and ripped the guts out of its struggle for autonomy, what the struggle around the wage HAS achieved is not real emancipation, collective security or justice, but only the endless cycle of economic growth, raising levels of mass consumption and increasing *POPULATION* in completely unsustainable ways which imperil the future of all life on earth. The prosperity of past generations of workers (a highly relative and conditional achievement anyway) has been bought at a stupendous and unpayable price, and has guaranteed not just that our grandchildren will live in poverty but that the future of planet probably belongs to rodents and insects. >And the facts so > finely articulated > on this list will become _a_ central concern of such an army, but _never_ > become _the_ > organizing principle. Tragically, you may be right. Mark _______________________________________________ Crashlist resources: http://website.lineone.net/~resource_base To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/crashlist
