From: Jerry Levy (Gerald_A_Levy@MSN.COM)
Date: Tue Mar 14 2006 - 07:35:16 EST
Hi Jurriaan, Just briefly -- a couple of points. > An indication of how communists understood decadence in the 1930s can be > gleaned from Christopher Caudwell's "Studies in a Dying Culture" (some > bits of it here http://www.marxists.org/archive/caudwell/). Gyorgy Lukacs > also refers to it in several writings (e.g. <http://www.marxists.org/archive/lukacs/works/destruction-reason/ch03.htm ). > It was a kind of "conception of the epoch" people had - not entirely > unreasonably, given two world wars, numerous smaller-scale wars, and great > social havoc. Maybe difficult to understand in retrospect, but at the time > it seemed very real. I agree with you completely here: the belief by Trotsky that capitalism was in the throes of its "death agony" also has to be contextualized historically. Yes, I think that was a not unreasonable belief in 1938. But, _our_ perspective has to take into account what has happened historically since that time. We can not allow the rhetoric of decadence to get in the way of analysis simply because we like its prose. > In reality, possibly the biggest crisis of our time is the growth of a > rheumy conservatism and diminished expectations of life, whereas the task > of > a revolutionary or a radical thinker is to make "the impossible possible", > to expand or widen the realm of human possibilities, to inspire confidence > in the ability of self-acting individuals to change their world. If people > are too afraid or overloaded to dare to do anything, speak out, be > adventurous, join together etc. they cannot change society for the better, > can they. You might laugh at me, with my humdrum petty existence, for > saying this, but at least I'm not afraid to moot the idea. I'm not laughing. Indeed, I think your comments speak to an issue at hand. Let us return to what we referred to as "the ideology of capitalist decline and decadence." One such narrative (which I am embellishing for dramatic effect) might go something like the following: In the epoch of capitalist decay, economic crises will become more frequent and intense. Then, comes the economic collapse. What happens after the collapse, after the economic breakdown? Why, the "revolutionary moment", of course. The working class and the wretched of the Earth will rise up in revolt: like a scene from the film "Network", everyone will put their heads out the window and scream "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore!" Then they will rush to the streets, shout "Karl Marx was right!", and burst into song -- "The Internationale", of course. The expropriators will be expropriated!, Red Butterflies will Flap their Wings, and (after a brief transitional period) everyone will live happily ever after. The End. There are, of course, many problems with such a narrative. One problem is the lack of any conception of how workers' consciousness changes. You are right, Jurriaan: the self-confidence of the working class is vitally important to any prospect for revolution. As anyone who is an activist should know, workers gain self-confidence as a consequence of victories, not defeats. Victories -- even small ones -- tell them that they can win and therefore encourage them onward to greater challenges. It is therefore not some kind of automatic response to economic crisis which creates revolutionary action. Revolutions are made by those who know that they _do_ have something which can be lost -- contrary to the assertion in _The Communist Manifesto_ (another example of excellent prose but inadequate analysis). They know that their lives and the lives of loved ones and communities can be lost. They have everything to lose and everything to gain. They will risk all only when they believe they can win. It's hard to say what is the basis for the mythology that has developed about revolutions. Revolutionaries -- perhaps Marxists most of all, but including anarchists -- tend to be hopeless romantics! Hence, our narratives about Crisis & Revolution tend also to be Romantic. Like others I'm a romantic in some senses as well, but I think what is needed for both theory and praxis is clarity and alertness and patience and resoluteness and determination, and *humility*. There's a lot that we don't know and we shouldn't be afraid to say that. Instead of thinking that we have all of the answers, we have to realize that a lot of the answers will only emerge in the course of class (and other) struggles. In solidarity, Jerry
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