Bordiga versus Pannekoek

http://www.theoryandpractice.org.uk/library/bordiga-versus-pannekeok-antagonism-2001
Date Written:  2001-01-01
Publisher:  Theory and Practice
Year Published:  2001
Resource Type:  Article
Cx Number:  CX20177

Over a decade has passed since the fall of the Berlin wall, and the announcement then of the "End of History" seems now to be not just ideological, but beneath contempt.

Abstract: 
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Excerpt:

2001, over a decade has passed since the fall of the Berlin wall, and the announcement then of the "End of History" seems now to be not just ideological, but beneath contempt. Open warfare returns to Europe, not as an isolated episode, but endemic like an ancient disease grown resistant to modern antibiotics. The global economy veers headlong into recession. Many of the political institutions of international capitalism (G8, IMF, World Bank) are more discredited, and protested against, than ever before. At the same time, the development of capital has not, as many expected, seen the building of ever more and ever larger factories in the oldest capitalist countries, but instead the closure not just of factories, but of whole industries. As a consequence there is a decrease in the percentage of the population who appear as the archetypal workers of Marxist or syndicalist lore. This has led many to regard class as an old-fashioned idea. Talk of a "party" is often regarded as even more irrelevant because of its association with parliamentarism (more and more people quite rightly don't vote and don't see why they should) or Leninism (when the Bolshevik legacy of the USSR/Eastern Europe has disintegrated).