Toward a new kind of socialism
From: Nemonemini
To: hasc.warrior.stew@gmail.com ; marxmail@groups.io
Date: Fri, Sep 10, 2021 4:01 pm
To say that Marxism is dead may be the wrong way to put it, but what I meant was that while just after Marx/Engels the second international took off globally and was within decades a global foundation for the left. But after 1989 the left has been in a kind of stall. Part of the problem is the cognitive dissonance created by the way a healthy Marxist left in our present uses the same terminology as pseudo-communist China and North Korea, et al. The public is terrified of Marxist thinking for that reason, including most in the working class. The Marxist left has dozens of groups and organizations and none of them can grow. The DSA may be an exception but it is hardly much of a Marxist formation. I consider that any work here needs to respect the reformist/revolutionary distinction or divide and should speak to both. But if that is the strategy then a revolutionary perspective will end up slightly dominant over the other. I often speak of 'virtual' revolution which seems to mean we can calm the nerves of nervous nellies in the reformist wing by taking revolution as a potential possibility that we must study carefully. But the time of revolutionary action may soon come. Noone expected the English Civil War, the French Revolution, the Civil War, or the Bolshevik revolution. They happened on their own and it wasn't until the Bolshevik case that an outstanding leftist group was at hand to accomplish socialist transformation. But the latter failed. Russia wasn't really the right place to start as many awaited anxiously for a German revolution, which never took place.Continue reading "A post to marxmail with reference to postmarxism and democratic market neo-communism"