A lot has been said about "movementism" in recent years--not much of it AFAIK reflected on Marxmail recently.
Maybe a distinction should be made when referring to "movements" as they emerged in the 20th c. up to 1970 or so, in however combined and uneven a fashion, and "movements" as they persisted and developed or emerged after that, even when there is a degree of continuity of personnel and stated objectives. I'm not convinced that existing modern "movements" are always and at all times the same thing they once were or are entirely continuous with predecessor movements. New movements on the other hand may be constituted phenomrnologically (so to speak) differently than previous ones in important ways. I wasn't familiar with the apparently longstanding debate on the left about the term "movementism," and it may not be entirely relevant, but I found a, to me, interesting article about it on the Luna17 blog ( http://luna17activist.blogspot.com/2013/07/movementism-what-it-is-what-it-isnt-and.html ). The following passage interested me: [ L]et's consider where the concept ["movementism"] comes from. It is basically a creature of the retreat and downturn for working-class struggle that began in the mid-1970s. The disorientation of the revolutionary left after the international upturn in working class struggles ended in around 1975 - with the defeat of the Portuguese Revolution, Italy's 'historic compromise', Britain's 'social contract', the end of mass workers' unrest and so on - was accompanied by a general shift to the Right and a profound weakening of rank-and-file workers' organisation. This was accompanied by the marginalisation of Marxist ideas (replaced, over time, with ideas labelled 'poststructuralist', 'postmodernist' etc). One aspect of the rightwards shift, the downturn in struggle and the marginalisation of revolutionary socialism was a growth in what was sometimes termed 'movementism', linked to the 'new movements' or 'social movements'. This trend was regarded on the revolutionary left as a shift to the right because it downplayed class politics, wrote off any need for independent revolutionary organisation (with much rhetoric about how 'Leninism' was dated, undemocratic and patriarchal), and paid little attention to trade union activity. Criticising such 'movementism', it should be stressed, did not mean neglecting the kind of issues that it tended to promote: gender, race, sexuality, and so on. It did mean - and rightly so - having a distinct Marxist analysis of such issues combined with a practical approach that emphasised connections between oppressed groups and the working class movement (and a stress on mass activity, where possible, rather than elitist and isolationist forms of action). How might one--or should one--update this idea today, when considering eg the corporatization of BLM and related phenomena? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#4623): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/4623 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/79092317/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/8674936/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
