From: gerald_a_levy (gerald_a_levy@MSN.COM)
Date: Mon May 12 2003 - 08:25:54 EDT
Rakesh wrote on Sunday, May 11: > The need for an answer is urgent as the inability to appreciate fully > the contradictions of capitalist production and the consequent > formulation of revisionist programmes begin after all with a denial > of any mode of reality for the law of the tendency of the rate of profit > to fall! The 'formulation of revisionist programmes' have historically been disconnected from debates around the FROP. The debate with the "revisionists" within the SPD in the 1890's was essentially about "reform or revolution?" and the role of the state. Bernstein and other revisionists did challenge "orthodox" Marxist theory -- then advanced by Kautsky, August Bebel, Wilhelm Liebknecht and others -- as it related to the 'laws of motion' of capital, capitalist crises, the 'inevitability' of socialism, etc., but the "orthodox" Marxists of the time (and for at least a couple of decades afterwards) advanced underconsumptionist and/or disproportionality theories of crisis rather than the FROP theory. At some later point in time, "revisionism" became a term of abuse primarily directed by some "Marxist-Leninist" groups against other "Marxist-Leninists" and so, consequently, has little meaning today. "Reformism" is a closer to the original meaning of "revisionism" but reformism doesn't begin with "an inability to appreciate fully the contradictions of capitalist production" -- it is a political movement that arises from divisions within the working class -- and some might argue, is an expression of "class collaboration" -- rather than an intellectual reaction to Marx's and/or Marxist theory. In solidarity, Jerry
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