Nas
27th July 2004, 19:11
Socialism as a self-conscious international movement has been in crisis since the demise of the Soviet Union because many people of socialist persuasion are more uncertain than ever before about their constituency -- whether the proletariat as described in traditonal Marxist terms, or the peasantry in traditional Maoist terms, is the or even a plausible candidate for a revolutionary class, or who else might supersede those candidates.
Leo Panitch, for example, in Renewing Socialism (2001) wrote that it was wrong of Marx to contend that the rise of trade unions would generate schools for socialism. The association of workers for the purpose of collective bargaining has proven quite compatible with capitalism -- since such bargaining concerns the terms of wage labor, not the legitimacy of wage labor. He argues that Marxist political parties must abandon the assumption that there is anything inherently revolutionary about any class, so that they can get to work creating a self-conscious revolutionary class of wage earners, "articulating the articulation."
Leo Panitch, for example, in Renewing Socialism (2001) wrote that it was wrong of Marx to contend that the rise of trade unions would generate schools for socialism. The association of workers for the purpose of collective bargaining has proven quite compatible with capitalism -- since such bargaining concerns the terms of wage labor, not the legitimacy of wage labor. He argues that Marxist political parties must abandon the assumption that there is anything inherently revolutionary about any class, so that they can get to work creating a self-conscious revolutionary class of wage earners, "articulating the articulation."