"Economism" revisited

http://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/e/c.htm

The "economists" theoretically limited the aspirations of the working class to an economic struggle for higher wages and better working conditions, asserting that further political struggle was the business of the liberal bourgeoisie. They denied the vanguard role of a party with the working class, considering that the party should merely observe the spontaneous process of the movement and register events.

I also remarked in my "Program of a New Type" than modern-day "social-democrats" are little more than "economists who, not being for full worker ownership and control over the economy as a very realistic means to end the exploitation of labour, are to be kept out of the United Social Labour organization."

However, I have checked out information on this albeit tiny revolutionary group:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolut...mocratic_Group
http://www.rdg.org.uk/permrev/index.htm

[Notwithstanding my concern about them using the term "permanent revolution"]

The RDG believes that the far-left concentrates excessively on economic struggles without a clear focus on the need for democracy.

At first, this implicit charge of "revolutionary economism" that is being levelled at much of the far-left seems a bit ridiculous. However, given what Lars Lih said (p. 90 and 91 of Lenin Rediscovered), there may be more:

We can now understand why it was fatal for a Russian Social Democrat to be labelled as an "economist." An individual or group who really did argue that political rights were unimportant, or that it was no part of Social Democracy's job to fight for them, or that political goals should be restricted to economic legislation - such a person, if the charge held, was not a 'moderate' Social Democrat and certainly not (as some scholars seem to think) a more orthodox Marxist than his 'political' opponents. No, such a person had read himself out of Social Democracy altogether. 'He who lets political freedoms wither or withholds them - he who keeps the proletariat from the struggle to win these freedoms and to extend them - that person is one of the proletariat's worst enemies.'

[BTW, that last quote there is the original quote of Kautsky upon which I based my bolded paraphrase at the end of the Chapter 4 section "Unity in Action." ]



Thoughts? [I guess this goes hand in hand with the debate on "United Social Labour" vs. "Social-Labour Democracy" vs. "Social Labour and Participatory Democracy."]