Click on the headline to link to "Workers Vanguard", dated September 28, 2007, for the article on the subject noted above.
Markin comment:
We revolutionaries, especially those of us who adhere to a Marxist perspective do not get, nor in some case do we want to get, to pick and chose the non-capitalist states we will or will not defend. That is the case with China today-the Russian question point blank for my generation, and now a new generation of revolutionaries. There are still enough gains from that revolution in 1949, although getting more slender in some areas of state control over the last decade or so, to warrant the continued defense of that deformed workers state against international imperialism and internal counter-revolution (in some ways the greater threat today).
That situation may change in the next period but for now know this-revolutionaries can get many things wrongs, make a lot of mistakes in tactics and strategy but a close examination of the history of our international working class movement, and especially its advanced political elements makes this next point very clear. Getting it wrong on the defense, or non-defense, of workers states has always been since 1917, at least if not before that around the defense of the Paris Commune, the cutting edge between those who pursue revolutionary goals and those who trail off in reformism, or worst. Ask Max Shachtman, James Burnham, Ted Grant, Tony Cliff, and a cast of thousands in the English-speaking world alone. It ain't pretty when you lose that axis. Defend China!
Markin comment:
We revolutionaries, especially those of us who adhere to a Marxist perspective do not get, nor in some case do we want to get, to pick and chose the non-capitalist states we will or will not defend. That is the case with China today-the Russian question point blank for my generation, and now a new generation of revolutionaries. There are still enough gains from that revolution in 1949, although getting more slender in some areas of state control over the last decade or so, to warrant the continued defense of that deformed workers state against international imperialism and internal counter-revolution (in some ways the greater threat today).
That situation may change in the next period but for now know this-revolutionaries can get many things wrongs, make a lot of mistakes in tactics and strategy but a close examination of the history of our international working class movement, and especially its advanced political elements makes this next point very clear. Getting it wrong on the defense, or non-defense, of workers states has always been since 1917, at least if not before that around the defense of the Paris Commune, the cutting edge between those who pursue revolutionary goals and those who trail off in reformism, or worst. Ask Max Shachtman, James Burnham, Ted Grant, Tony Cliff, and a cast of thousands in the English-speaking world alone. It ain't pretty when you lose that axis. Defend China!
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