Review of "Democratic Socialism and Class Collaborationism" by Marxism Abridged, a collective of Orthodox Marxist writers.
What is democratic socialism, and why is it harmful to the real movement? It may seem helpful to try to affect capitalism to obtain real wor
Despite the fact that I was very critical of the past chapters, I must admit that this one is fairly good overall. My immediate issues are primarily with wording - "the real movement" is lingo most often used by Italian left-communists that stems from "The German Ideology" by Marx:
Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality [will] have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things. The conditions of this movement result from the premises now in existence.
It's not used very often outside of this context, from my experience.
The chapter readily conflates "social democracy" and "democratic socialism", which may cause a lot of confusion amongst readers but is, in actuality, a justified conflation. It is a distinction without a difference; the latter claims to want to attain "socialism" through democratic means, whereas the former wants a "mixed economy", but in actuality, the differences are purely superficial and both political currents produce identical results in practice. The label of "democratic socialism" is merely a reaction to the obvious opportunist capitulation of present-day social-democrats, who themselves used to be much like the present-day democratic socialists, having been forced to give in to material pressures to survive. This capitulation rightfully labels the social-democrats as being "uninterested in building socialism", yet democratic socialists can't help but adopt the same methods in the hope of different results. The democratic socialists today are precisely the political current that calls for a reformist programme to overcome capitalism, and they follow in the footsteps of great historical social-democrats - hence it makes sense, from a modern perspective, to label Lasalle, Ebert, and the Gotha Programme as "democratic socialist". I would argue these historical social-democrats were even more committed to the proletarian cause than today's democratic socialists. There are a lot of neat and simply explained principles contained within this chapter, so people new to Marxism should absolutely give it a read! P.S. it is in this chapter that I noticed a lack of concrete perspective when it comes to political action. This is the case with a lot of leftist and Marxist writings - political action is always abstracted as something "you" or "I" can do.
So what is there to be done? Well, first, class collaborationism in all forms must be replaced by class solidarity on the working class’s part, and class traitorism on the bourgeois class’s part. Class traitorism, in this case, would mean a defection of a member of the bourgeoisie from the greater group in support of the working class. This, paired with a wide class movement amongst the working class, would be revolutionary.
In this chapter, at least, it is "the working class", but it is always important to note that some of the most critical work in the present conditions in the west, must be carried out by a communist party - hence, the tasks must be directed at what the party-organ should do, and not the individual proletarian reading the chapter.
