The political strategies they bequeathed are less rewarding. They were all, without exception, wrong - revolutionaries and reformists alike. This was because the shared assumption upon which all of their differing prescriptions rested was mistaken: that capitalism had exhausted its historic potential, and the working class would become increasingly immiserated and receptive to socialist change by peaceful or violent means.
Of course capitalism has exhausted its historic potential. Two world wars, fascism and dozens of barbaric interventions by US imperialism, including the murder of 3 million people in Indochina, demonstrate that. Marxist theory has always acknowledged that the system resolves contradiction through war. With the introduction of atomic weaponry, it is more imperative than ever to abolish the system.
On the left, Trotsky's theory of "permanent revolution" - that a revolution in Russia, capitalism's weakest link, would trigger socialist revolution beginning in the advanced West, has also never been realized.
The same idea was actually put forward by Marx in a letter to Zasulich.
From roughly 1917-1990, it appeared this scenario, albeit in a deformed way, was unfolding in the USSR and China and was an appropriate model for postcapitalist development elsewhere in the world. The collapse of the USSR and China have since demonstrated these were at best premature experiments with public/state ownership, and that reports of the death of capitalism were greatly exaggerated.
I don't think the collapse of the USSR demonstrates that the experiments failed. Instead they prove that the CP was more than willing to participate in counter-revolution than anticipated. Trotskyists, I am afraid, tended to view the Soviet bureaucracy much more like trade union bureaucrats in the USA would fight to preserve the institutions that they were based on when push came to shove. The example of Stalin's resistance to Hitler tended to reinforce such a view. Ultimately, the bureaucracy calculated correctly that they could be better off under capitalism than they were as a privileged caste. Of course, the masses got screwed in the process.
It is tempting to speculate that Lenin's original formulation of a prolonged period of capitalist development under the direction of a workers' and peasants' government may be a useful way of understanding the course of 20th century history in China and the USSR, except that he understood this as a way station to a socialist future. Instead, as we now know, they turned out not to be that at all: In the late 80's, under the pressure of a more productive capitalist world economy, they reversed course and reverted to private ownership.
No, Cuba is a far better example of what Lenin had in mind but not in terms of "capitalist development". It looks like what might have been possible if Stalin hadn't hijacked the revolution.
If and when it is no longer capable of delivering a modest increase in living standards to increasing numbers of people, they will turn against it. This seems to me to be the ABC of Marxism.
Really? The mass radicalization in the USA only took place in the 1930s after there was an uptick in wages and a reduction in unemployment.
If and when conditions change, and the only alternative in a highly polarized society will to side with those who want to hound, jail, and kill those closest to us, the choice will then be a rather easy one for most of us to make - without much abstract theorizing.
I have a feeling that the same people who are urging a vote for Kerry today will be urging the same policies in the future when workers are occupying factories and calling for a general strike. You don't switch brands from Menshevism to Bolshevism when the "time is ripe". Menshevism is a chronic condition like eczema.
Louis Proyect Marxism list: www.marxmail.org
