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The revolutionary socialist perspective, a myth?
Friday 4 July 2025, by
The revolutionary socialist perspective, a myth?
Is socialism, the new dominant system established by a proletarian revolution, a myth?
Both reformists and false revolutionaries agree on one point: we must be realistic, we are not ready for socialism. Instead of asking whether capitalism is close to its final fall, they claim that socialism is not close to its advent! They deny the objective nature of the necessity of socialism (due to the need to offer an alternative to a capitalism that is committing suicide). They seek in the slave mentality the proof that the slave revolution is not relevant and thus oppose the materialist conception of revolution defended by both Marx and Trotsky, for whom the necessity of revolution stems from objective conditions and not only subjective conditions!
Like a volcanic eruption or an earthquake, revolution is an objective phenomenon.
https://translate.google.fr/translate?u=https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article657
Not only do reformists and false revolutionaries not take objective conditions into account, but they present capitalism as an insurmountable horizon at the very moment when capitalists recognize its collapse and are very afraid of it. The brake on the socialist revolution therefore does not come from objective conditions or subjective conditions (i.e. the perception of the exploited) but from those who claim to be or present themselves as a "political" leadership of the proletariat, blaming the absence of revolutionary politics on the exploited themselves, while it is these same pseudo "worker", "union", "political" or revolutionary leaderships who, through their mentality of slaves of big capital to which they are integrated, affirm that the oppressed will always be incapable of being anything other than oppressed, making them the only objective obstacle to the socialist revolution! Contrary to what they claim, social revolutions overthrowing the established order do not come from situations where, in advance, the exploited and the oppressed were aware of their capacity to change the essence of things. Proletarians need to experience revolution for themselves to learn that they have this capacity! It is revolution that changes the mentality of the oppressed while changing the social order, not the other way around. Proletarians must, through self-organization, learn to understand their revolutionary way of organizing themselves to know that this type of organization (councils, committees, soviets, revolutionary assemblies) is capable of seizing power and fundamentally changing the social order.
But all this is not discussed by the bourgeois reformists and the false revolutionaries who still agree on one point: the morale of the working class is holding back its struggles too much for it to still be capable of attacking the established order. And both of them attribute to the capitalists and the rulers in their service that they feel strong enough to crush the struggles. Thus, we can read from the pens of people who claim that capitalism is ripe to make way for socialism that the workers, themselves, are not ready for it!!! It is the false extreme left organization Lutte Ouvrière (LO) which thus declares through its spokesperson Arthaud:
"Challenging power means challenging the economic and political power of the capitalist class. It means fighting for workers’ power.
It is to fight with the idea that workers, in power, will be able to solve the problems facing society not by fomenting new wars, new famines, and new crises. But by putting wealth and the means to produce it at the service of humanity because they will have abolished capitalist private property, the law of profit, and competition.
Workers today are far from this political awareness. Even defending themselves, acting collectively, striking, or demonstrating seems difficult, even out of reach, for many of them.
We certainly hope that the current walkouts and strikes at Carrefour, Total, ExxonMobil, and many other companies are the swallows that herald spring. But for now, the mobilization of the working class is far from matching the attacks.
When it comes to combativeness, big business and the government have a good head start...
To attack as they are doing today, big business and the government must feel strong. And they feel strong because for years we have been taking blows without hitting back.
Working conditions are deteriorating, prices are skyrocketing, and we make do. If we have to wait six months for an operation at a public hospital, we wait. If our children need tutoring because the National Education system is almost no longer replacing absent teachers, we pay... If we have to go to work on crowded buses or subways, we squeeze in... And today we are being conditioned to accept being cold this winter: it will be for a good cause, we are told!
So of course there are a number of us who are angry, but the general mood is one of resignation.
We know that this wait-and-see attitude weighs on those who want to fight, it sometimes demoralizes the most combative. Well, I would like to say first of all that this is not the case for us! (…)
So yes, many oppressed people embrace the dominant ideas of the bourgeoisie. And for most of their time, they accept their fate and endure it.
And it is not by getting agitated, by constantly calling for strikes and, worse, by lecturing the people around us that we can counterbalance this leaden blanket. This leaden blanket will break when it breaks!
By theorizing the demoralization of the working class in this way, by making it a permanent obstacle to any revolutionary perspective, LO, this pseudo-revolutionary organization (the Canada Dry of revolutionary alcohol), thus allows the pseudo-demoralization of the working class to be used as a cover for its abandonment of any revolutionary program while asserting that only this organization holds revolutionary ideas in cans and that it will only release them at the moment that History chooses. In the meantime, its militants and sympathizers are only entitled to carry out reformist activities under the pretext that the lead weight has not yet been lifted!
What we denounce about Lutte Ouvrière applies, a fortiori, to all the organizations which are falsely "in the workers’ camp" and which are often even worse than LO, such as the two NPAs, the NUPES organizations and the unions.
The example of the Yellow Vest movement is striking for understanding the political behavior of this type of organization. The Workers’ Struggle organization refused to associate itself with the Yellow Vest movement and even refused to support it. It contributed, like the unions, to discrediting it in companies while actually fighting it. And now that the revolutionary danger is with their help, LO justifies its own passivity and opposition to the Yellow Vests on the pretext that
"These protests are not directed against the established social order. They do not have the political aim of removing power from the capitalist class.
Even the last mass protest, the Yellow Vest movement, did not lead to a challenge to the government.
Because demanding Macron’s resignation and his replacement by another politician does not take anything away from the power of the big bourgeoisie.
But did LO seek to campaign within the Yellow Vests to propose challenging the government? Not at all! Quite the opposite!
https://translate.google.fr/translate?u=http://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?breve968
The Yellow Vests were not attacking the ruling classes or the wealthy. This is false:
https://translate.google.fr/translate?u=http://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article5340
In the text cited above, LO states that the workers’ struggle against employer and government attacks has not gone beyond the level assigned to it by the reformist leaderships of the unions. But LO also has not sought to go beyond the limits imposed by the inter-union movement in this movement! As has been the case for a long time, LO not only no longer seeks to campaign for such an overcoming, but has made the conscious choice to keep the workers under the traitorous leadership of the unions subservient to the State and big capital!
Read as follows:
https://translate.google.fr/translate?u=http://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article2233
Here is how we discuss the reversal of the reformist leadership and how LO talks about it:
https://translate.google.fr/translate?u=https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article7143
https://translate.google.fr/translate?u=https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article7183
The so-called revolutionary communist reasoning of Lutte Ouvrière is as follows, and it is the complete opposite of revolution and communism. It asserts that there is no need for either revolution or communism:
"Well yes, it would be possible to protect workers and society as a whole from three major catastrophes: mass unemployment, the housing crisis, and the deterioration of the standard of living of the majority of the population! The measures that would be necessary are radical but simple, clear, and perfectly feasible, without any of them even involving the expropriation of big capital and the transformation of the private property of large companies into collective property."
Through the voice of Arlette Laguiller, that is to say, the leadership of Lutte Ouvrière!
The proletariat has considerable potential strength but far too many false friends:
https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.phhttps://translate.google.fr/translate?u=p?article7118
The big organizations are all on the same side, regardless of the value, honesty, and courage of their activists. They do not equip workers for the only action worthwhile: self-organizing struggles to move toward the self-organization of power.
https://translate.google.fr/translate?u=https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?breve1201
https://translate.google.fr/translate?u=https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article5192
Already, they refuse to tell an elementary truth: reformist parties and unions are virulently against the class struggle of the proletariat and are one of the obstacles to be politically overcome in the march towards socialism:
https://translate.google.fr/translate?u=https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?breve1201
https://translate.google.fr/translate?u=https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article7042
These organizations refuse to tell workers that the reformists can only lead us to defeat and that their days of action can only lead us to demoralization and inaction:
https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.phhttps://translate.google.fr/translate?u=p?article6984
The strength of workers is their numbers, say some activists who claim to be revolutionaries and Marxists... This is false: the strength of the proletarians is being able to do without big capital!
https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article2883https://translate.google.fr/translate?u=
During the Yellow Vest movement, the proletarians took the lead of the working people, which includes many so-called "liberal professions." This is one of the things that reformists and false revolutionaries criticized him for, even though this should be the policy of the proletariat according to Marx or Lenin, i.e., the proletariat does not defend any particular interest but must take the lead of the working people!
https://translate.google.fr/translate?u=https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?breve955
In the face of the current collapse of capitalism, the class politics of the proletariat leads it to take the leadership of the working people.
https://translate.google.fr/translate?u=https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article5907
Yes, it is the yellow vest movement that must be revived in businesses in the face of the so-called pension reform, the attacks on living standards, and the threat of world war and global dictatorship.
https://translate.google.fr/translate?u=https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?breve1208
It is false that the proletarians must today recognize that they are not ready to build socialism since they are failing to build a mobilization on days of union inaction!
As Diderot said:
"There is no individual who, dissatisfied with the form of government of his country, cannot seek a better one elsewhere. There is no society that does not have to change its own, the same freedom that its ancestors had to adopt it. On this point, societies are as they were at the first moment of their civilization, without which there would be a great evil; nay, the greatest of evils would be without remedy. Millions of men would have been condemned to endless misery. Conclude then with me: That there is no form of government whose prerogative is to be immutable.
No political authority, created yesterday or a thousand years ago, can be repealed in ten years or tomorrow.
No power, however respectable or sacred, is authorized to regard the State as its property.
Whoever thinks otherwise is a slave. He is an idolater of the work of his hands.
Anyone who thinks otherwise is a fool, who devotes himself to a misery dterwelle, who devotes his family, his children, his children’s children to it, granting his ancestors the right to stipulate for him when he was not, and arrogating to himself the right to stipulate for his nephews who are not yet, All authority in this world began either by the consent of the subjects, or by the force of the master. In either case, it can end legitimately, Nothing prescribes for tyranny against liberty.
(source: http://ottaviani.chez.com/diderot/dhdi.htm )
We, the proletarians, have no reason to idolize the capitalist system, nor to attribute to it a durability that it does not have, nor the strength to crush us that it does not have!
The capitalist system has been under attack at its core since it reached the limit of its capacity to accumulate capital. This is where it found its dynamics of productive investment. And this is where it is mortally wounded.
https://translate.google.fr/translate?u=https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article4084
Has socialism failed everywhere? In Russia? But the Bolsheviks claimed they did not want to build socialism in Russia alone! Socialism in a single country is only a product of the Stalinist counterrevolution! Why did the Russian revolution fail to spread? Not because of the incapacity of the proletarians but because of the betrayal of the reformists and the incapacity of the false revolutionaries! And elsewhere? But regimes that call themselves "socialist," like China, are not founded on proletarian revolutions!
The Yellow Vests demonstrate that we are once again entering the era of proletarian revolutions:
https://translate.google.fr/translate?u=https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article5216
All the more reason to prepare for the coming struggle by demolishing the credibility of the reformists:
https://translate.google.fr/translate?u=https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article7257
The working class still has all its strength and all its perspectives...
https://translate.google.fr/translate?u=https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article4398
Stalinism does not demonstrate that revolutionary internationalism leads to bankruptcy, but proves the opposite.
https://translate.google.fr/translate?u=https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article3446
https://translate.google.fr/translate?u=https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article1418
https://translate.google.fr/translate?u=https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article267
To conclude, as Trotsky said in the Transitional Program in 1938 on the eve of the Second World War:
"The world political situation as a whole is characterized above all by the historical crisis of the leadership of the proletariat.
The economic premise of the proletarian revolution has long since reached the highest point achievable under capitalism. The productive forces of humanity have ceased to grow. New inventions and new technical progress no longer lead to an increase in material wealth. Conjunctural crises, in the conditions of the social crisis of the entire capitalist system, overwhelm the masses with ever greater deprivation and suffering. (…)
The bourgeoisie itself sees no way out. In countries where it has already been forced to stake its last bet on the card of fascism, it is now marching blindly towards economic and military catastrophe. (…)
The picture of international relations does not look any better. Under the increasing pressure of capitalist decline, imperialist antagonisms have reached the limit beyond which the various conflicts and bloody explosions (…) must infallibly merge into a world conflagration. Of course, the bourgeoisie realizes the mortal danger that a new war represents for its domination. But it is now infinitely less capable of preventing war than on the eve of 1914.
All sorts of chatter that historical conditions are not yet "ripe" for socialism is simply the product of ignorance or conscious deception. The objective premises of the proletarian revolution are not only ripe; they have even begun to rot. Without a socialist revolution, and that in the next historical period, the whole of human civilization is threatened with being swept away in catastrophe. Everything depends on the proletariat, that is, first and foremost on its revolutionary vanguard. The historical crisis of humanity is reduced to the crisis of revolutionary leadership.