----- Original Message -----
From: "Sabri Oncu" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>This is pretty much what Boswell and Chase-Dunn suggest in "The Spiral of
>Capitalism and Socialism" as well. I am not at all comfortable with the
>strategy they are suggesting to the global movements, as, for example, it
>involves supporting the EU and the like and then somehow democratizing them
>later...However, calling their approach neo-Bernsteinism
>seems to be a fair assesment.
Hardly Bernsteinism, who was quite comfortable operating for reforms at the
existing political level and had little interest in internationalism.
In fact, if anything, it is classical Marxist doctrine- Marx was quite clear
in calling for socialists to support the greatest centralization of the
state possible, erasing localism as much as possible.
In 1850, surveying the last few years of revolutionary upsurge, Marx noted
that the bourgois parties sought to maintain decentralized government, while
workers should support the strongest centralization possible. In his
Address to the Communist League, he wrote:
"The democrats will either work directly towards a federated republic, or at
least, if they cannot avoid the one and indivisible republic they will
attempt to paralyze the central government by granting the municipalities
and provinces the greatest possible autonomy and independence. In opposition
to this plan the workers must not only strive for one and indivisible German
republic, but also, within this republic, for the most decisive
centralization of power in the hands of the state authority. They should not
let themselves be led astray by empty democratic talk about the freedom of
the municipalities, self-government, etc...A renewal of the present
situation, in which the Germans have to wage a separate struggle in each
town and province for the same degree of progress, can also not be
tolerated...As in France in 1793, it is the task of the genuinely
revolutionary party in Germany to carry through the strictest
centralization."
Chase-Dunn et al just take this logic to the global state level, with the
argument being that only with the framework of global government can a
united global working class abandon divisive separate state-by-state
struggles in favor of a united struggle to convert the global bourgois state
to a socialist one.
It may be the wrong analysis for this period (although I have some sympathy
in moving things in that direction), but it is classical Marxism, not
revisionism.
-- Nathan Newman
