This is a narration of
the introduction to Mike Macnair's groundbreaking book
Revolutionary Strategy. Narration and editing by Lydia
Apolinar.
The free
market triumphalism of the 1990s is over. Early 21st century
capitalism looks like Karl Marx’s description: growing extremes of
wealth and poverty, and irrepressible boom-bust cycles. But for the
moment, rightwing religious and nationalist nostalgia politics is
the main beneficiary of the opposition this has spawned. The
political left remains in the shadow of its disastrous failures in
the 20th century. The centre-left - where it has not joined forces
with the neoliberal right - clings to nationalist and
bureaucratic-statist nostalgia for the social-democratic Cold War
era. The far left clings to the coat-tails of the centre-left. It
cannot unite itself - let alone anyone else - because it is
unwilling to reinterrogate the ideas of the early Communist
International, especially on the ‘revolutionary party’. To move
beyond this impasse we need to re-examine critically the strategic
ideas of socialists since Marx and Engels’ time. This book begins
the task.