The Left is saying the crisis is coming; and from that crisis the workers will rise to overthrow, cast off the yoke, destroy the juggernaut of capital, et cetera. There comes to mind, irresistibly, the futile drama of all the times before. The Communist speaker of the ’thirties, proclaiming that civilisation now stood at the brink, imparting to his hearers that the capitalist system was tottering and all that was needed was a good push. Syndicalist doomster in the post-war years, impressively pointing to the approaching crisis as one of capitalism itself: the phrase conveying certainty that the machine would now grind to a halt, its cogs gummed-up with (probably) an excess of the seeds of its own decay.
This continual resurrection of old beliefs is one of the many chronic diseases of the Left. Each generation rediscovers the theories which proved sterile for its predecessors. The failure is never attributed to the error of the theory itself. Those who followed it were “betrayed”, or the time was unforeseeably not ripe; but now it will be written on banners to make the revolution. Yet this theory of the climacteric crisis—“the death agony of capitalism”—and its revolutionary consequence is perhaps the most hopeless of all. What is involved is dual misunderstanding: of the nature of economic crises and the nature of the socialist revolution.
The form of the argument today is as follows. Capitalism is now acutely pressed between a falling rate of profit and workers’ wage demands (…)
The easy assumption is that extreme poverty will make workers rebel against capitalism and flock to “revolutionary” leaders. All the evidence is against it. If it were true the Gorbals, Liverpool, Falls Road and the tied farm cottages of England would be full of revolutionaries. (…) Unpalatable as it may be, what the unemployed worker seeks is work and relief from his acute immediate problem, not to be assaulted further in an ideological battle. (…)
That does not mean conditions are irrelevant. Socialist consciousness starts from indignation at the consequences of capitalism; but until feeling has given way to understanding, consciousness does not exist. The aim of the crisis-struck Left is to foster blind revolt, from which not Socialism but only defeat and disillusionment can result. The real need is for working men and women to comprehend that, in or out of crisis, the capitalist system must always frustrate hopes of a satisfactory life.
[Socialist Standard, March 1973]
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