I will personally not say much about this and simply refer to what Domenico Losurdo said in an interview. In 2016, Losurdo was interviewed to discuss two books written by him, Class Struggle and the Absent Left.

At the end of the interview, Losurdo says, “I see no contradiction between the commitment to ‘the Reconstruction of the Communist Party’ and the wish and encouragement for the recovery of the left in our country (and in the West more generally). Once you get past the binary reading of social conflict, you can understand very well the existence of forces that, while not subscribing in any way to the communist program of overthrowing the capitalist-imperialist order, are fighting for the defense of the welfare state and for a politics of peace. On the contrary, it was authors such as Bobbio who believed that the overthrow of the “socialist camp” in Eastern Europe and the dissolution of communist parties in the West would give impetus to the Western left, finally freed from the lead in its wings. As is well known, the opposite happened. The Absent Left draws attention to this. In this regard, the book specifies that the recovery of the left in the West implies not only the fight against the dismantling of the welfare state, but also against wars whose neo-colonial character and catastrophic consequences are now clear to everyone.”

Link to the interview

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[–] 3 points 19 hours ago (1 child)

The State guaranteeing employment is still not enough, because the Keynesian systems post ww2 tried just that and began to creak and break in the 1970s leading to the neoliberal counter-reform faction winning power. The spiralling is just the usual cycles of capitalism throwing chunks of workers on the scrap heap when they fail or need to "cut the fat" to not collapse during crises of overproduction.

This argument (and I get that you aren't the one actually making it) slips back into economism and the false dichotomy of workers vs welfare users. Many workers aren't stupid enough to fall for it, but the imperial core does have a substantial base of Petit-Bourgeois owners and strata of workers that will happily latch on to it to try and sustain their position. It /should/ be easy to refute but whether or not we have the right conditions to have our ideas take hold is another thing entirely.

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  • [–] 2 points 17 hours ago

    The State guaranteeing employment is still not enough, because the Keynesian systems post ww2 tried just that and began to creak and break in the 1970s leading to the neoliberal counter-reform faction winning power.

    Oh totally, a welfare state cannot function within capitalism long term regardless. I kind of clumsily tried to make the point that it is at least manageable during periods of industrialization and growth, because there are jobs. Obviously under capitalism this will never happen long term.

    It /should/ be easy to refute but whether or not we have the right conditions to have our ideas take hold is another thing entirely.

    Most people think only of the spectrum represented in the parliament. So when they think "communists" or "leftists" they think of whatever succdem party the media is currently calling "far-left", and then nothing else. So we are already set back enormously because they keep making things worse (and moving to the right). In the minds of most people, they have to choose between eroding welfare services + higher taxes vs eroding welfare services + lower taxes, and obviously most are gonna choose the latter.

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