Why has membership declined?

[Stranger Than Paradise]

Why have left wing ideas become more fringe, it is something I am at a loose end to explain. For example the CNT had 1.5 million members in 1937. Today it has around 35,000. In the UK today the situation is worse, I cannot think of a left wing organisation which has 35,000 members. At least where I'm standing there seems to be a broad decline over time of membership of left wing organisations. What has happened?

[LeninBalls]

It's generally a first world thing, and in my opinion it's a result of first world imperialism where first world workers benefit from their national bourgeois' imperialism to such an extent many don't unionize or seek better working conditions, etc.

Basically, labour aristocracy.

[Stranger Than Paradise]

It's generally a first world thing, and in my opinion it's a result of first world imperialism where first world workers benefit from their national bourgeois' imperialism to such an extent many don't unionize or seek better working conditions, etc.

Basically, labour aristocracy.

Yes I was going to say I think the trend is primarily the first world. How do you think we can counter this?

[Qayin]

How do you think we can counter this? As Refused has said
We NEED new noise.

May 68 has shown us if we change our methods what we can
potentially accomplish. We need to move past whats dead
and work on whats relevant to our time.

In my opinion( and please don't bother replying to this
its in no way to start a sectarian war, just to spread ideas.)

In the 1st world we need to abandon
+Marxism-Leninism(Anti revisionism/stalinism/ect)
+Trotskyism
+Maoism
+Democratic Socialism(In America the two party dictatorship is unbreakable and in the EU they already showed there irrelevance)
+Anarcho-Syndicalism/Platformism (This isn't 1936 Spain, and platformism manages struggle)

All these dead theories that have no foot hold in the sand any longer ever since the 20th century.
Some of these theories are relevant to nations such as Nepal and poorer countries
but in the USA they have 0 influence.

Things like the Situationist International shook things up in the 60's. Affinity's shook up 1999, we need something NEW
for our generation that we can band together for that can start Today
we cant wait forever.http://www.revleft.com/vb/../revleft/smilies2/Star.gif

[Atlee]

This is one thing I have been trying to explore at American Socialist Voter with all the past and different groups there needs to be something new.

[StoneFrog]

At the moment developing countries are doing most the labor for the developed countries, but once these developing countries such as india start to become more developed and labor prices will rise. The the Developed countries will have start producing more and more within their own country, this will start building a bigger worker issues, and will become more prominent to the people.
There are more white collar workers now than there has been in the past, and the all work within these big corporate companies. White collar workers are less likely to look out side the box, being blind is just fine for them. Also white collar workers aren't sure what roll they can play within a revolutionary setting, also what is going to be their roll after the revolution.

I feel that you got to start addressing the white collar workers a bit more, if we are going to get more progress. Where most revolutionaries are blue collar or intellectuals in developed countries, but the white collar workers are the majority. But off course to totally different in still developing countries and under developed countries.

This at least is what i think =]

[robbo203]

It's generally a first world thing, and in my opinion it's a result of first world imperialism where first world workers benefit from their national bourgeois' imperialism to such an extent many don't unionize or seek better working conditions, etc.

Basically, labour aristocracy.

What a ridiculous claim. Do you realise just how much the proportion of first world capital is invested in the so called Third World? It is minuscule. The great bulk of FDI (forerign direct investment) from First world countries goes into other First World countries and even this is a small fraction of the total capital held within First World countries.

If First world workers really were being "bribed" by their national capitalists in this way, why would the latter want to hold down wages and, as is the case in several countries already, slash social welfare programmes?

You really need to ditch this dotty theory. It holds absolutely no water at all.

[28350]

The left is at a historic low point. Even those who are leftists are disorganized and ineffective.

According to an acquaintance of mine, the problem is due to a lack of revolutionary leadership. Throughout the 20th century, various revolutionary leaders were assassinated (for one reason or another). This leaves us with no one to rally around today.

This is troubling in and of itself, but even more so when we take into account the fact that the right is mobilizing itself.

Also, in response to AMKsurgency's post on what we need to abandon (for some reason, the quote tool isn't working for me):

Lol.

[Robocommie]

How do you think we can counter this?

If the Left can continue to promote itself as an alternative while Goldman-Sachs reaps the rewards, we might be able to expand to reach our former levels.

The truth is, I think we're actually more in line with the American people than we think. In Michael Moore's Capitalism, there's a scene where this family is being evicted from their home and they're moving their stuff out of the house. This is set in Peoria, Illinois, which is important because Peoria is the archetypical Midwestern city, it's a stand-in for Anytown, USA. It's also pretty close to where I live, but that's irrelevant.

The point is, the father in this family looked every bit the cliched Republican, paunchy, obviously hard-working and tired, owns several guns, wears a hunter's camo baseball cap, drives a truck, all of that. But while sitting in his truck, this guy said to the camera, "Sooner or later there's gotta be a war between people who have got it all and people who don't have anything. Because that's all that's left."

I mean, sound familiar? That's like a summary of the Communist Manifesto, except it's just this guy talking about how he feels. Right now, in this country, people are furious. People are having their homes foreclosed on, and they're either getting evicted or watching their friends, families or neighbors getting evicted, and all the while, the banks just kept making more and more money. No matter what happens, whether the country does well or not, the banks make more money. At the moment I am writing this, the US unemployment is 9.5% and the banks are being bailed out. And everyone in this country is aware of that, and nobody who isn't rich is happy about it. Nobody.

We just need to show them how Socialism is the answer, we need to present it as an alternative. I truly believe we will find working class people are already largely Socialist, they just don't know it yet.

[LeninBalls]

What a ridiculous claim. Do you realise just how much the proportion of first world capital is invested in the so called Third World? It is minuscule. The great bulk of FDI (forerign direct investment) from First world countries goes into other First World countries and even this is a small fraction of the total capital held within First World countries.

If First world workers really were being "bribed" by their national capitalists in this way, why would the latter want to hold down wages and, as is the case in several countries already, slash social welfare programmes?

You really need to ditch this dotty theory. It holds absolutely no water at all.

Where did I claim they're being bribed? I only said workers in the first world have a better standard of living due to their native nations (most) having an imperialist history, such as Britain and France, and having wads of cash pumped into them by the US post WW2.

I think it's pretty straightforward stuff to acknowledge that richer countries can afford higher living standards, and by some magic coincedence, these richer countries happen to have been/are imperialist nations.

As for cuts and whatnot recently, I don't think a worker's living standard is number 1 priority for the bourgeois during a recession.

[Qayin]

Lol.
Some of us cant wait forever.
It is a serious post I hoped to maybe get some thought out there.


There's an interesting book you should check out, its currently shaping my ideas of Post-Leftism in the 21st century regarding the 1st world. Its called Nihilist Communism- a critique of optimism in the far left

[Die Rote Fahne]

I believe that one reason is that there's an increasingly large number of libertarian Marxists and left communists who are without a party to organize together.

[syndicat]

It's generally a first world thing, and in my opinion it's a result of first world imperialism where first world workers benefit from their national bourgeois' imperialism to such an extent many don't unionize or seek better working conditions, etc.

Basically, labour aristocracy.


sorry but this idea is crap. only a very tiny percentage of the profits of the first world based capitalists are derived from foreign investment in the 3rd world. and there's no particular reason why they should share them with the working class.

higher standards of living in the first world were based upon increases in productivity from investment. but this investment was mainly generated from the labor of first world workers. and increased productivity, tho it allows for a higher standard of living, does't guarantee it. Since early '70s there's been an increase of productivity of 74% in USA but real wages have actually declined, due to a wide ranging offensive of the capitalist class.

moreover, your blame-the-victim ideology will only get in the way of developing more fighters within the working class in first world countries.

there were thousands of revolutionaries in the USA in the '30s when there was a huge working class rebellion. the USA was an imperialist country back then also. so how did those revolutionaries come into existence? the high point in revolutionary class consciousness in the USA was the World War 1 era, afer 2 decades of large scale mass organizing for socialism by the Socialist Party and the development of syndicalist tendencies such as the socalled "new unionism" of that era, of which the IWW is the most famous example.

Since then we've had the dismal history of state socialist failure, both the "Communist" police states and the deteriorating social democratic bureaucracies.

[Zanthorus]

As Refused has said
We NEED new noise.

This basically. A lot of the left is simply not making serious effort to make themselves relevant to the day to day experiences of working people. Left organisations should be a reflection of the society we want to achieve yet a lot of the time they end up replicating the structures of capitalism. Even worse, what some people want to achieve at least for the time being is simply capitalism with the nationalisation of the top 150 industries. Everyone agrees that we ultimately need to move beyond capitalism but some sectors push this goal further and further back in time. Some have even added a whole new "stage" of history called "socialism" between the revolution and the ever distant communist utopia.

We need to bring back the idea of a "truely human society" to the forefront and organise ourselves in ways that reflect it in order to make it something immanent and relevant to people and help them see as something they can achieve rather than some far off utopia.

One thing though:


Things like the Situationist International shook things up in the 60's.

The SI had something like 15 members over the course of it's lifetime. Mai 68 was a result of the mass action of the working class, not small art groups.

[Taikand]

"Sooner or later there's gotta be a war between people who have got it all and people who don't have anything. Because that's all that's left."


Exactly! I remember seeing that scene. That's exactly what ended all my
anti-americanism. I think the left needs to actually do things, and not just sit and discuss theory. I really thank that America is more likely to become socialist than my country (where economy is almost dead, the Parliament votes right now for the exact measures that brought the Greeks in street, yet no one does anything!!!).

[Chimurenga.]

May 68 has shown us if we change our methods what we can
potentially accomplish. We need to move past whats dead
and work on whats relevant to our time.

In my opinion( and please don't bother replying to this
its in no way to start a sectarian war, just to spread ideas.)

In the 1st world we need to abandon
+Marxism-Leninism(Anti revisionism/stalinism/ect)
+Trotskyism
+Maoism
+Democratic Socialism(In America the two party dictatorship is unbreakable and in the EU they already showed there irrelevance)
+Anarcho-Syndicalism/Platformism (This isn't 1936 Spain, and platformism manages struggle)

All these dead theories that have no foot hold in the sand any longer ever since the 20th century.
Some of these theories are relevant to nations such as Nepal and poorer countries
but in the USA they have 0 influence.

Things like the Situationist International shook things up in the 60's. Affinity's shook up 1999, we need something NEW
for our generation that we can band together for that can start Today
we cant wait forever.

You seem like one of those Crimethinc anarchists..

[Robocommie]

What about the sweatshops that exist around the world, full of kids and women making Nike shoes that they themselves can never hope to afford, working for starvation wages so that the US can continue to have a base of cheap and affordable consumer goods?

Damn near everyone I know shops at places like Wal-Mart, and they do it because it's cheap.

[StoneFrog]

I believe that one reason is that there's an increasingly large number of libertarian Marxists and left communists who are without a party to organize together.

I agree, i am one of these people.

[howblackisyourflag]

I agree, i am one of these people.

This is the one issue that makes me think, 'hmm, im an anarchist, but maybe lenin was right, even if it didnt work out in the end, he achieved revolutionary change.

Not that Im saying we should give up democracy or start running in elections, but we need to be grouped together in larger groups, at least as groups of anarchists such as the platformist groups, or even a wider anti-capitalist left.

On a wider note, I think what we should be doing is taking individual issues people protest against, for example the privatisation of water, help them and also try to put it into a context of the more fundamental problem of capitalism.

Simple idea maybe but its the simple ones that work.

[Wanted Man]

Why have left wing ideas become more fringe, it is something I am at a loose end to explain. For example the CNT had 1.5 million members in 1937. Today it has around 35,000. In the UK today the situation is worse, I cannot think of a left wing organisation which has 35,000 members. At least where I'm standing there seems to be a broad decline over time of membership of left wing organisations. What has happened?

Well, in the case of the CNT, it is fairly easy to explain. First of all, they were heavily crushed in the fascist era. Also, bear in mind that they are a trade union confederation; there are others in Spain which do have millions of members. From where I'm standing, it's actually pretty impressive that anarchist and communist union networks in Southern Europe are so large. In countries like the US, this tends to be limited to reconstituted IWW groups, who try hard, but are only a shadow of their former selves, amounting more to historical re-enactment.

On a global scale, a little something happened between 1989 and 1991 that significantly impacted the left. Especially in Western Europe, communist parties were liquidated, completely stripped of their members, assets, etc., dissolved into reformist outfits.

Trotskyist and anarchist organisations did not back the USSR, so the consequences to them may have been smaller. But in most cases, they were already significantly smaller anyway. Some of the larger ones may still have suffered from ideological disorientation and things like that.

The end of the USSR also led to the proclamation of the "end of history", of the supposed death of ideologies, classes, and stuff like that, and the way in which politics was done was changed. We got all kinds of nice ideas about how we're supposedly a society without classes, full of "mouthy" citizens who can change the world by joining environmental or human-rights groups. The idea that you can organise and struggle as a class is only just on its way back.

[FSL]

Well, in the case of the CNT, it is fairly easy to explain. First of all, they were heavily crushed in the fascist era. Also, bear in mind that they are a trade union confederation; there are others in Spain which do have millions of members. From where I'm standing, it's actually pretty impressive that anarchist and communist union networks in Southern Europe are so large. In countries like the US, this tends to be limited to IWW historical re-enactment.

On a global scale, a little something happened between 1989 and 1991 that significantly impacted the left. Especially in Western Europe, communist parties were liquidated, completely stripped of their members, assets, etc., dissolved into reformist outfits.

Trotskyist and anarchist organisations did not back the USSR, so the consequences to them may have been smaller. But in most cases, they were already significantly smaller anyway. Some of the larger ones may still have suffered from ideological disorientation and things like that.

The end of the USSR also led to the proclamation of the "end of history", of the supposed death of ideologies, classes, and stuff like that, and the way in which politics was done was changed. We got all kinds of nice ideas about how we're supposedly a society without classes, full of "mouthy" citizens who can change the world by joining environmental or human-rights groups. The idea that you can organise and struggle as a class is only just on its way back.

Yes, the decline is mainly because of the restoration of capitalism in the USSR. It must have been a hit even for trotskyist parties or anarchist organizations. If the reason for not joining them before was "There is already a huge CP here and half the world is socialist, you just seem to like whining", now there is a common reason to refuse participation in anything having to do with revolutionary politics "Nice idea, shame it doesn't work".


However it's not just that. One has to look where we were before 1989. In 1945 the largest party in France was the communist party. Communist parties had earnt the majority among workers in many countries, even in the US there was a "red scare".
Pretty much all that momentum was lost despite the success by many anti-colonial movements. The communist movement lost its revolutionary character, it became watered down, "old". Berlinguer wanted rational economic policies, Deng and Kosygin nodded in agreement etc.
The same reasons that held the USSR back, held the whole movement back and the same reasons that brought the restoration of capitalism brought us back to square 1.

That's what we need to fix.

[Wanted Man]

Thanks for the additions. I did mostly look at the difference between the late 80s and today. The reason for this is that, even though the communist parties and other leftists had already lost significant mass support by then, the difference is still significant.

Evidently, the period between 1945 and 1989 also deserves a serious analysis, because it contains the roots of the eventual collapse. What happened there? Looking at specific periods raises even more questions. For instance, how come the "New Left" failed to capitalise on the losses of the "Old Left" as well?

[Qayin]

You seem like one of those Crimethinc anarchists.. Yawn. I was expecting some petite-bourgeois comment, zanthorus knew I had this coming.

I refuse the Crimethinc label, I am not a Lifestylist,a "gutter punk", nor do I waste my time with shit like "Steal something from work day", hopping trains, or squatting. Cute way to marginalize a growing trend though.


The SI had something like 15 members over the course of it's lifetime. Mai 68 was a result of the mass action of the working class, not small art groups. http://libcom.org/library/may-68-documents-situationist-international

There influence was certainly there, I'm not giving SI credit for the whole event on you know.



ow come the "New Left" failed to capitalise on the losses of the "Old Left" as well?
I wish I knew this.

[nuisance]

Because formalism is boring.

[robbo203]

Where did I claim they're being bribed? I only said workers in the first world have a better standard of living due to their native nations (most) having an imperialist history, such as Britain and France, and having wads of cash pumped into them by the US post WW2. .

That is precisely my point - you are attributing the "better standard of living" had by workers in the developed world to the fact that the developed world's relationship with the developing world has been been based on imperialism. That is to say, wealth is sucked out of the latter and transferred to some extent to the working class in the former. "Bribery" is the expression used by Lenin in his so called labour aristocracy thesis. You might not have used the term itself but your whole explanation clearly resonates with Lenin's utterly unfounded thesis.



I think it's pretty straightforward stuff to acknowledge that richer countries can afford higher living standards, and by some magic coincedence, these richer countries happen to have been/are imperialist nations.
.

No one is denying there are differences in living standards. The point at issue is how do you account for them. I am saying the imperialist explanation holds no water. For a start the flows of capital or FDIs involved in relative terms are as I say, relatively minuscule, and even if somehow you could demonstrate a mechanism involved in the alleged transfer of wealth from the poor world to the working class of the rich world, the amounts involved are nowhere near adequate to account for the big discrepancies in living standards. Such discrepancies can be fully accounted for on other grounds without invoking the flimsy imperialism thesis at all



As for cuts and whatnot recently, I don't think a worker's living standard is number 1 priority for the bourgeois during a recession.

Exactly. So why should the capitalists investing their capital in some third world country wish to share the proceeds of their investments with the workers at home which is what is implied in your argument? The capitalists will do what they can to resist wage demands and indeed will endeavour to impose wage cuts on workers in the first world if they can get away with it. This hardly suggests a disposition of generosity towards the latter.

[REVLEFT'S BIEGGST MATSER TROL]

I have no idea.

I truly believe in the whole communist ideal, but I can't help but think that perhaps our ever shrinking numbers shows that our ideals have been disproven by history?

I just hope that we get our act together, I couldn't tell you any real, deep reasons for why things have turned out so badly for the left, but there are a few obvious, pratical steps that we can take.

Number one being to elimante all the needless bullshit amoungst the left, which is even prelavant here online...And i'm not talking about a bland commitment to "anti sectarianism" which nearly everyone holds while still managing to be highly secatarian, but just some open, respectful, vigorous debate where we actually engage with each other in order to advance the left's cause as a whole, rather than having our petty party or tendency "win" on one issue or another. I mean for God's sake, you can't even critise some party around here without all of its members suddenly getting prissy and acting offended that you'd have the nerve to critise THEIR party, when it works SO hard and is GROWING really fast and clearly everyone is an armchair revolutionary and blah blah blah. The damn things aren't important at all, and I fully except, if a revolution does happen, it will be done by an entirely new "party" type organisation, that springs up in response to workers demands, not some one around right now, thats just absurd. Heck, half of them will probably be writing all kinds of insulting crap about the new workers party in their papers even as it goes futher towards communism than they ever could hope too do.

Oh thats another thing actually, party loyalty. Communists are loyal to their class, not their party. Stop getting pissed off that someone insults "YOUR" party, or that you think another party really sucks, we fetishise those things so much, they are meant to be soley vechicles for improving class conciousness, not something that you can have loyalty too or that should consider as somethign meaningful except as a tool. Shit like creates so many problems. Heck, divorced from the class as a whole in such a manner, or considered indepedant of the class, or the left in general, revolutionary parties really become a lifestyle, image thing, which is ironic since thats what the most feverant knights of a particular "line" generally accuse those who aren't so deeply commited to a particular party of being.

[Qayin]

I truly believe in the whole communist ideal, but I can't help but think that perhaps our ever shrinking numbers shows that our ideals have been disproven by history?
Its only disproven leninism and all the 20th century corpses the left wont bury.
Party politics are effectively dead

[Chimurenga.]

Yawn. I was expecting some petite-bourgeois comment, zanthorus knew I had this coming.

I refuse the Crimethinc label, I am not a Lifestylist,a "gutter punk", nor do I waste my time with shit like "Steal something from work day", hopping trains, or squatting. Cute way to marginalize a growing trend though.

Not my fault your rhetoric is exactly like their writing.


Its only disproven leninism and all the 20th century corpses the left wont bury.
Party politics are effectively dead

If this were even remotely true, where are the anarchist revolutionary groups? They don't exist and even if they do, they will dissolve into obscurity. Meanwhile, Leninist and Maoist groups in Peru, Columbia, Nepal, India, Palestine, and the Philippines are alive and well.

I tried not resort to sectarianism but with all the bullshit you're bringing to not only this topic but this forum lately, you're kind of asking for it.

[Qayin]

If this were even remotely true, where are the anarchist revolutionary groups? They don't exist and even if they do, they will dissolve into obscurity. Meanwhile, Leninist and Maoist groups in Peru, Columbia, Nepal, India, Palestine, and the Philippines are alive and well.


Oh wait you read my posts right?

Some of these theories are relevant to nations such as Nepal and poorer countries
but in the USA they have 0 influence.


I tried not resort to sectarianism but with all the bullshit you're bringing to not only this topic but this forum lately, you're kind of asking for it.
Internet tough guy. I'm not the only ones with these views on this forum im putting down our views, I am not going to allow a ML circle jerk.

[Devrim]

I think that the answer to this is connected to the historic period, and the level of class struggle. Their are a few separate points I wanted to comment on though.
For example the CNT had 1.5 million members in 1937.

Yes, the CNT grew rapidly after the revolution. In some ways because of its prestige, but not totally unconnected to the fact that membership of a trade union was obligatory under the Republican government.


Today it has around 35,000.

If you divided by ten, I think your number would still be a little to high.



Things like the Situationist International shook things up in the 60's. The SI had something like 15 members over the course of it's lifetime. Mai 68 was a result of the mass action of the working class, not small art groups.


There influence was certainly there, I'm not giving SI credit for the whole event on you know.

I think the SI were great self-publicists. That doesn't mean they had much influence. The number of their members was actually 70. They are listed by name here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Members_of_the_Situationist_International


I believe that one reason is that there's an increasingly large number of libertarian Marxists and left communists who are without a party to organize together.

It wouldn't in any way make up the numbers. You are talking about tiny minorities of people. There are left communist organisations though. I'd advise you to get in touch with one.

Devrim

[AK]

This is the one issue that makes me think, 'hmm, im an anarchist, but maybe lenin was right, even if it didnt work out in the end, he achieved revolutionary change.
The party shouldn't even try to bring change or seize power post-revolution, the working class must.

The emancipation of the working class must be an act of the working class itself.


Not that Im saying we should give up democracy or start running in elections, but we need to be grouped together in larger groups, at least as groups of anarchists such as the platformist groups, or even a wider anti-capitalist left.
No. We need to abandon reformist and leninist ideologies.


On a wider note, I think what we should be doing is taking individual issues people protest against, for example the privatisation of water, help them and also try to put it into a context of the more fundamental problem of capitalism.
This.


I believe that one reason is that there's an increasingly large number of libertarian Marxists and left communists who are without a party to organize together.
I agree, i am one of these people.

I guess I'm one of those people, too. We don't need a party as such, we need an organisation that tells the working class of the injustices of the capitalist system and why the old "socialist" states failed. We need a propaganda-spewing organisation, essentially.

[Jimmie Higgins]

There have been ups and downs in membership in various tendencies since the height of revolutionary parties. While many people in this thread have been pointing out various subjective reasons (i.e. that party or that tendency stinks) I think the most important reasons are objective. For the most part what has caused tendencies or groups or individual radicals to "go off the rails" is their failure to be able to deal with the objective problems. While I think ideological problems contribute to this, it can't totally explain things like the decline of the entire new left in which Maoist groups failed but so did Trotskyist and Anarchist. Basically having good politics and a realistic assessment of the objective reality of the class war helped different groups cope better, but wouldn't have made the difference between getting Ronald Regan in 1980 or Revolution in 1980. I think the only time that a party or group could have made that much of an impact was during the height of the CPs because they basically had a monopoly on radicalism which is something no other tendency has had since.

For the US experience, there has been 30 years of attacks from the employers that have not only caused demoralization and disorganization of the former new left (as well as the anti-globalization movement in the US) but helped to bring unionization rates to single digits. There has also been massive repression in this period of offense for the ruling class side of the class war - direct police and state repression of the new left radicals (the BPP for example); legal repression of the most effective labor weapons (restrictions on the rights to picket, massive injunctions by the courts).

All this has created a situation where repression has led to less confidence among regular people (which emboldens the trade-union beurocracies and liberal or reformist groups who generally say that we need to be conciliatory and moderate our demands and actions). The low level of labor and social struggle in turn makes our isolation from the majority of workers even more acute since if there are no strikes or mass movements, there is no above-ground struggle to relate to and to make our arguments to... if people aren't engaged in direct battle with the bosses, our ideas about the class war and what needs to happen for workers to actually put their own interests forward are irrelevant to many individual workers. It's like we have a design for an airplane, but if all the engineers who could build it don't believe flight is even possible, so they have no interest in even entertaining our blueprints. So, essentially we have a situation where radicalism and the working class have been divided. Our task now - and what the best radicals are currently doing is to mend that break and re-establish a radical working class tradition.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

In addition to the things Syndicat says, I have tried to explain some of the reasons for this this decline here:

http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/page%2009_02.htm

[ContrarianLemming]

According to an acquaintance of mine, the problem is due to a lack of revolutionary leadership.


We tried that, to no avail (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cult_of_personality)

[ContrarianLemming]

What about the sweatshops that exist around the world, full of kids and women making Nike shoes that they themselves can never hope to afford, working for starvation wages so that the US can continue to have a base of cheap and affordable consumer goods?

Damn near everyone I know shops at places like Wal-Mart, and they do it because it's cheap.

You realize most garment making factories in the first world are also sweatshops ?

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

I think (and I hope!) that by 'revolutionary leadership' the comrade (Paranoir) means leadership by a genuinely proletarian party, which would exclude such cults.

[ContrarianLemming]

I think (and I hope!) that by 'revolutionary leadership' the comrade (Paranoir) means leadership by a genuinely proletarian party, which would exclude such cults.

No no no no no no..let's not reinact the russian civil war :)

anyhoo, from what I can see, the far left is fringe now for a few good reasons..

Back in the roaring 20's and after WW 1 the far left was strong and common, then the Bolsheviks took over Russia and the anarhcist sections of the far left took a back seat and became far weaker (with exceptions, like Spain and Italy). So communist parties are suddenly the hip thing as non leninist far leftists become increasingly weak.
Eventually, as we all know, the Soviet union came crashing down and, as explained, the communist parties and marxism worldwide took a huge blow which it has yet to recover from, while at the same time, the anarchist sectionso f the far left are still recovering from the russian incident (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_civil_war)

So now both the statist commies and stateless commies are pretty weak, all because of russia! (and canada!)
I think it's the general concensus no that anarchism is becoming stronger is the greater anti globalization movement, while marxism is now siffering what anarchism went through back in the soviet days.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Aeon, there is some truth in what you say, but I think the problems go a little deeper than this.

[Robocommie]

You realize most garment making factories in the first world are also sweatshops ?

Yeah, largely employing immigrant laborers, hence internally colonized.