Reform and reformism

[alanjjohnstone]

A quote that may provoke thought

Quote:

Castoriadis: “I think that immense tasks are to be accomplished on the level of elucidating the problematic of revolution, of denouncing falsehoods and mystifications, of spreading just and justifiable ideas, as well as relevant, significant, and precise information”; As for the rest, we can do nothing: the workers will struggle or they won’t, the women’s movement will spread or it won’t … But what one should feel responsible for is that in France [for example] there are at least hundreds of people who are thinking by the problematic that matters to us … The only way to find out if you can swim is to get into the water.”

Cited in Chamsy Ojeili's articlehttp://www.democracynature.org/vol7/ojeili_intellectuals.htm

[alanjjohnstone]

Food for thought

Quote:

N.B. as to political movement: The political movement of the working class has as its object, of course, the conquest of political power for the working class, and for this it is naturally necessary that a previous organisation of the working class, itself arising from their economic struggles, should have been developed up to a certain point.On the other hand, however, every movement in which the working class comes out as a class against the ruling classes and attempts to force them by pressure from without is a political movement. For instance, the attempt in a particular factory or even a particular industry to force a shorter working day out of the capitalists by strikes, etc., is a purely economic movement. On the other hand the movement to force an eight-hour day, etc., law is a political movement. And in this way, out of the separate economic movements of the workers there grows up everywhere a political movement, that is to say a movement of the class, with the object of achieving its interests in a general form, in a form possessing a general social force of compulsion. If these movements presuppose a certain degree of previous organisation, they are themselves equally a means of the development of this organisation.Where the working class is not yet far enough advanced in its organisation to undertake a decisive campaign against the collective power, i.e., the political power of the ruling classes, it must at any rate be trained for this by continual agitation against and a hostile attitude towards the policy of the ruling classes. Otherwise it will remain a plaything in their hands

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/letters/71_11_23.htm

[alanjjohnstone]

Further food for thought

Quote:

There is no better road to theoretical clearness of comprehension than "durch Schaden klug werden" [to learn by one's own mistakes]. And for a whole large class, there is no other road, especially for a nation so eminently practical as the Americans. The great thing is to get the working class to move as a class; that once obtained, they will soon find the right direction, and all who resist, H.G. or Powderly, will be left out in the cold with small sects of their own. Therefore I think also the K[nights] of L[abour] a most important factor in the movement which ought not to be pooh-poohed from without but to be revolutionised from within….A million or two of workingmen's votes next November for a bona fide workingmen's party is worth infinitely more at present than a hundred thousand votes for a doctrinally perfect platform.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1886/letters/86_12_28.htm

[colinskelly]

I think the key to Engels quote is where he says 'at present'.  In continental Europe and the USA the labour movement arose contemporaneously with Marxian ideas and many organisations formally adopted as their political aim the ultimate aim of capitalism.  Marx and Engels had high hopes for the fertility of their ideas in such movements, a justifiable optimism at the time.  The British labour movement, I think, is a different story.  It had had a far longer history of developing its own political independence from liberalism but had not needed a non-capitalist ideology to this.  Rather, it fought for the right for political inclusion.  Early British socialists, the Anglo-Marxists, saw this coming and did not see the political development of the labour movement so optimistically.  They followed a long tradition of criticism against purely political reform beginning with the Chartist Bronterre O'Brien.  What was important, he argued, was what the working class would do with political power.  This thread was picked up by the early British Marxian socialists who were more pessimistic about the prospects of working class radicalism.  They needed to know what to do with an increase of power.  Theory and practice told them that 'a million or two workingmen's votes' did not necessarily amount to meaningful change.  Unless there was a clear idea of what had to be done, a clear idea of what change was in the interest of the working class as a whole.  The early SPGB was therefore sceptical of the credentials of the nominally Marxist German SPD, a party held up as the apex of Marxian socialism at the time and still be many left historians.  Engels, it turned out, was wrong to be optimistic that organisations like the Knights of Labour could be revolutionised from within.

[alanjjohnstone]

I think you are right…Both Marx and Engels were often too optimistic on the development of workers consciousness…  

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