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(By Kiril Medvedev, an extraordinary thinker who has been a sharp critic of Putin, a poet, and a translator of Charles Bukowski!)
The identification of Russian radical left rests on revolutionary sentiment, which includes a historical rejection of social democracy, with its famous weighty examples of treachery and opportunism. The stories of tragic non-existent (Germany in the 1930s) and successful (Chile at the time of “Popular Unity”) cooperation are almost forgotten. Political competition is a complex matter: on the one hand, the Bolsheviks weren’t particularly against the idea of “socialist multi-partyism”, but on the other, the classic idea of communists as the sole avant-garde of the working class reproduces sectarian stereotypes in small left-wing groups and impedes the development of a culture of cooperation and multi-organisation solidarity that we need so badly today.
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/odr/social-democracy-russia-kirill-medvedev/ _________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
