- cross-posted to:
- prolewiki
- cross-posted to:
- prolewiki
Seeing the conversations around this topic in the post Most Western Parties Are Ossified and Failures I thought some folks might find value in this organizing guide created by USU. It draws from numerous articles they’ve written about organizing ML orgs from the ground up.
Name one successful socialist revolution in the West.
Or just one attempt at revolution by these western parties. Paris commune doesn’t count if it predates PCF.
edit- although, even past successes aren’t indicative of present situation and shouldn’t be used as a crutch by this leadership to deflect criticism.
1917 general strike in America almost resulted in a revolution.
1917 general strike was organized by IWW who, while surviving today, is not a party but a trade union.
William Z. Foster joined the CPUSA. The two fledgling parties also played a role.
What do you mean by revolution? Do you simply mean a “popular uprising”?
Then technically, most parties have done that to one degree or another.
I mean a socialist revolution. What else would I mean? Why would a communist party exist if not to bring about communism.
A Communist Party exists to bring about a democratic revolution and then a socialist revolution.
May 1968
French government was toppled
The government wasn’t toppled, they just did a snap election. That’s like saying the UK government was toppled when Theresa May called one back when she couldn’t Brexit.
Also, on that same election the communists lost chairs. This is nowhere close to a successful revolution.
I may have been too harsh and knee-jerky on you on my first reply, but it’s seriously very important to acknowledge our past failures and self-crit in order to find the correct path to revolution. In Brazil the Communist Party split specifically because the party was ossified and the faction that left/was expelled wanted to seek better paths. There’s no shame in admitting that what has been tried did not work.
They were toppled. They literally couldn’t continue their careers after that. That’s a victory. The Fifth Republic has existed since then.
That was a successful revolution.
A victory for a communist party is when you continue capitalism?
We’re not continuing capitalism; the capitalists are.
The Fifth Republic predates the 1968 strikes by 10 years. Maybe you’re mistaking that for May 1958 in which De Gaulle led a coup that actually toppled the Fourth Republic to “prevent communists” after crises caused by the Algerian War of Independence led by the FLN. That one was a successful counter revolution, though I’m open to the idea that it was a close one if evidence of that is presented. Besides all that, there’s nothing to celebrate about the Fifth Republic still existing as a “victory”.
But on the 1968 strikes and election, Pompidou went from Prime Minister to president, and was from the same party as de Gaulle, as was the new Prime Minister de Murville. The conservative UDR also gained seats. I may not be very knowledgeable about cold war French history, but you’re really not helping your arguments with such easily debunked claims.
That was a victory. Many representatives of the working class were ushered into the new government after May 1968. That’s why they had to combat the gains during the 1970s and 1980s.