ok, lets have a quick look at 1945 to today. After WW2 socialist revolution was on the cards in most countries. Every country was broke apart from America. The capitalist leaders plus Stalin worked to avoid any revolutions. That plan failed, revolutions happened anyway. Truman lost patience with Stalin's inability to stop revolutions, so he started the cold war and Marshall Aid. Marshall Aid was supposed to keep counties in the capitalist sphere, but it backfired in Eastern Europe. Even in the advanced countries, where Two Stage Theory didn't even apply, Stalinist policy was class collaboration.
America helped the non-Stalinist countries get going again. The French communists tried to stop the Vietnamese independence movement, but that plan failed and eventually America got drawn into a long war. Meanwhile The Korean war kicked off due to the impossibility of establishing a partitioned Korea and the impossibility of capitalism to be established in the South. The people in the south hated the capitalists so America imposed a dictator flown in from America, but he kept threatening to invade the North so the North made a pre-emptive strike.
The capitalist world economy benefitted from a massive expansion of trade, so it shot forward, though actually the USSR's economy grew even faster.
But the Russian economy was doomed by the dead weight of the Stalinist dictatorship. In the capitalist countries, the boom was doomed by the inner contradictions of capitalism, and by 1973 it was in crisis.
After Stalinism collapsed in Eastern Europe and Russia in 1989, the global capitalist economy got another boost, as it doubled in size, with Russia, Eastern Europe, China and India joining in. The people in Eastern Europe and Russia didnt want capitalism, they wanted democratic socialism, but it never happened. The Stalinists became capitalists.
Then a boom happened and lots of people got rich. When I say lots, I mean just the richest 1% actually. Most people got sod all. The boom of the early 2000's was simply based on credit, made cheap to overcome the dot com crash.
Now we face Greece on the precipice, another Lehmans quite possibly. The shit is gonna hit the fan.
After WW2 as I say there was revolutionary potential everywhere. This was one reason we got the NHS in Britain. Other stuff was nationalised either for ideological reasons or simply to modernise it, or because it was failing. Thatcher the flogged of the family silver and Greece is about to be forcibly sold off to international capital.
The Scandinavians did quite well but even they are going backward. Everywhere is going tits up. Greece, Ireland, Spain and Portugal are all on the brink. Iceland was exposed. Everywhere faces austerity measures.
It's quite incredible. In the FT, in an article called
"Athens must be put under the gun" (!!) in the same paragraph it calls for more austerity measures while admitting that these measures were "pushing the economy to its knees".
So much for reform. It has been tried and failed. The reformist parties are all now capitalist parties. They have given socialism a bad name. So of course did Stalinism. But even so, less that a quarter of the world thinks that capitalism is ok as it is, half want reform, and another quarter want to scrap it altogether. Even in America, as many under 30s support socialism as do capitalism.
Marxism is not utopia. It is cold analysis of historical processes, attempting to see where they might lead, and attempting to act as the vital subjective factor when crucial events take palace. Revolutions WILL take place. That is guaranteed. When they happen the capitalists usually try to crush them. In the past we had Stalinists to mess things up, like in Indonesia or Chile or wherever. Fortunately that is not the case now. However there is still that danger, eg in Egypt, of trusting in class collaboration. In revolutions, it is an invitation to disaster. Just read up on China, on Indonesia. The period after WW2 was a phoney, needless 'cold war' which had sod all to do with stopping the USSR spreading communism, and a lot to do with trying to smash workers movements. We need to learn from history, to study it honestly, face up to reality.
Howard : Does this, your statement, mean that the Soviet Union has to any degree abandoned its plans and intentions for bringing about world revolution?
Stalin : We never had such plans and intentions.Howard : You appreciate, no doubt, Mr. Stalin, that much of the world has long entertained a different impression.
Stalin : This is the product of a misunderstanding.
Howard : A tragic misunderstanding?
Stalin : No, a comical one. Or, perhaps, tragicomic.
http://www.marxists.org/reference/archi ... /03/01.htm
"in reality it was the Communists above all others who prevented revolution in Spain" George Orwell
Economic Left/Right: -10.0 Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -8.31