I recently read Alan Woods’s 1979 piece “Lessons of Chile 1973” (https://www.marxist.com/lessons-of-chile-1973.htm). Although not the primary focus of the paper, one of the biggest lessons for me is that there is _always_ a counterrevolution. (I suppose I knew this already because examples abound, but this is the first time I put it into words.) This applies to full-blown socialist revolutions as well as social democratic reforms; no matter how middling the changes, there will always be a reaction, and it will fight fiercely to roll them back.
Louis Proyect stated in a recent thread that, “In the current epoch, it has become much clearer that socialism can only succeed if it takes root in a country that has the technical, economic and military prowess to stand on its own” and socialist revolutions “will occur in advanced capitalist nations or they will have little chance of succeeding at all.” (There may be disagreement on this point, but it seems reasonable to me, so I’d like to take it as the starting point of my question.) This may be putting the cart before the horse since such a revolution is at least decades away, but what do people think could be done to quash the inevitable counterrevolution? It would certainly look different from the violent imperialist counterrevolutions of the 20th century, but I imagine it would still be fierce, entailing things like massive propaganda, capital strikes, etc. Considering its inevitability, it seems like fighting the counterrevolution should be an important part of any socialist program. I would be interested to hear thoughts of people on the list as well as any literature on the topic. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#6553): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/6553 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/80780416/21656 -=-=- 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]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
