LYDIA BAYONETA
What kind of epoch are we living in?
Excerpts from a talk given by Lydia Bayoneta at
the Communist Manifesto conference Dec. 6.
The Communist Manifesto" was written only weeks
before the 1848 revolutions swept across Europe. These
revolutions were the culmination of what had been, for the most
part, a period of reaction following the great French
Revolution and the Napoleonic Era which ended in 1815.
In his introduction to Karl Marx's book, "The Class
Struggles in France," Engels wrote: "For us under the
circumstances of the time there could be no doubt that the
great decisive struggle had broken out. That it would have to
be fought on in a single, long and painful time of revolution,
but that it could only end with a final victory of the
proletariat."
But the revolutions were defeated. After some months had
elapsed it became clear, to Marx and Engels at least, that the
revolutionary struggle was over. They came to this conclusion
only after an objective analy sis of the social and economic
facts of the day.
In 1992 Comrade Sam Marcy, founder of Workers World Party,
wrote: "In order to make an estimate of an epoch, it is
insufficient to take into account only the mood of the working
class, of either its most progressive or most backward
elements. Marxist strategy and tactics ...must also be based on
analyzing the objective and subjective position of the
bourgeoisie."
The questions we must ask ourselves are: What kind of epoch
are we living in now? What are the objective and subjective
positions of both our class and the capitalist ruling class
around the world?
The current epoch is one of reaction. Its salient feature is
the collapse of the Soviet Union and all the resulting
disorientation of communist parties and progressive movements
all over the world. The domination of U.S. imperialism and its
congenital tendency to lay its hands on everything in sight has
reached unprecedented heights. Both domestically and abroad,
the workers and oppressed have been on the defensive. The
general approach for the struggle has been one of "swimming
against the tide."
Is there reliable evidence the character of the epoch is
changing, or about to change? It is sometimes difficult to
recognize that objectively, in the long term, this is still the
era of capitalist decline. Again, we must look at the objective
and subjective situation of both the working class and the
bourgeoisie and recognize that all historical epochs are of a
transitional nature.
It is becoming more and more apparent even to the ruling
class that the destruction of the Soviet Union has not solved
their problems. In fact the recent collapse of the capitalist
Russian economy only contributed to the spreading global
economic crisis which has devastated Asia and spread to Africa
and Latin America.
The seeming ideological invincibility of capitalism, only
recently proclaimed in the U.S. with such phrases as "The New
World Order" and the "The End of History" has been seriously
undermined.
We must never forget that change is one of the fundamental
concepts of Marxism. Periods of reaction, like periods of
revolutionary struggle, are limited in time as well as
intensity.
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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