Louis Proyect wrote:
>
> Carrol Cox wrote:
> > I think we've had more than enough of posted material proving that
> > capitalism is very bad and that we are in a slump and that somebody
> > ought to do something about it. The pont isn't to pile up loads of
> > redudant material abut the world; the point is to settle down to
> > discussing how we might contribute to changing the world.
> >
> > Soros is a capitalis. Gee whiz.
> >
> >
>
> Yes, I know that we need to organize the masses, but in the meantime
> some people might be interested in the fact that Soros was selling
> Hungarian bank stocks short.
Well, yes, and up to a point "some people" includes me, but only up to a
point, which I think we passed some months ago.
Be that as it may, I did not quite have in mind the fact that we need to
organize the masses. That sort of goes without saying, except for the
fact that we can't just go out and organize the masses since, it seems,
the massesd are not very interested at the present time in being
organized. But though I'm not all that unhappy about the unreadiness of
the masses to be organized (Don't kick against the pricks, St. Paul
advised, and though he was too hard on formication he had a point on the
subject of pricks), I am unhappy about our inability to do something
that, Ithink, potentially we COULD be doing now, that is organizing
ourselves. ("Ourselves" is an undefined term here, which would/could be
defined in the process of organizing ourselves.) When we talk about
organizing, we are talking about the future, which is a theoretical
rather than a practical task, and a very knotty theoretical task at
that. The ongoing debate between Jim Devine & Sandwichman over time is
part of that theoretical task, but the fact that they have not really
yet arrived at a framework within which their debate could progress
rather than keep spinning on a dime is more evidence that we need to
explore more fully and more self-consciously the possible relationships
between our present and our past.
Assume that we are in the midst of the Third Great Capitalist Crisis
(after 1873 and 1929) - I have no opinion on whether this is an
empirical fact or not, and no accumulation of current data can determine
it. We will only know later looking back on it, but it is a useful
hypothesis for theoretical purposes, since if we aren't in a "Great
Crisis" then the present will just continue for awhile. I use the term
"Great Crisis" because "Great Depression" really refers
particularistically to condityions of the 1930s, and comparisons can't
be useful for political purposes.
On that assumption, in two or three years masses of people will be
wanting forms of organization through which they can express their
(understatement) concerns, and if _we_ (howver defined) cannot provide
those forms of organization, rightist leadership will be there to
provide it. I wish there was a shorter and pithier term for
"authoritarianism." Fascism is no more danger than is royalism, but a
severe crisis without a strong mass left will create for the 21st
century some new form of authoritarianism which will be as destructive
for us as fascism was for the 20th century. So we know what we DO NOT
face, 3 things:
1. A Second Great Depression.
2. FaascismB
3. Either a Second or a Third International (i.e., no mass
Social-Democratic Party exercising hegemony over the left nor no "M-L"
Party exercising hegemony over the left.
By hypothesis we face Great Crisis 3, but don't know just what it will
look like. We face a New Rightist Authoritarianism. We face the NEED for
a new form of left organization which can channnel mass disturbances to
the left rather than to a rightist totalitarianism.
So we really have to put our fucking brains together to think where we
are going and how we can prepare for where we are going, and spending
time reading or writing or talking about how bad capitalists are is
really a serius distraction from very serious thheoretical tasks.
Carrol
P.S. I didn't mention the Fourth International because that was
parasitic on the Third in the way Unitarianism is parasitic on
Christianity, so dismissing the the Third is also a dismissal of the
Fourth.
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