Did Marx underestimate the power of the middle class ?

[socialist_n_TN]

12. There's a lot of history behind ALL of these reform/revolution arguments....

IOW, this is NOT a new argument. My Workers' Power group holds monthly "extra" meetings on educational topics, in addition to regular discussion on picked topics of socialist historic and present day interest during our regular meetings. One thing I'm always struck by is how an argument from a century ago has SO much relevance to today's struggles. IMO, the reason(s) for the relevance is that capitalism hasn't changed, consequently, neither has the overall strategy for battling it. Now tactics are different. They of necessity change, but the strategies? Not so much.

It's also easy to relate to the reform arguments though, ESPECIALLY when you only have what your eyes see during the span of a single lifetime. When I was a kid in the 50s/60s it was the heyday of "regulated" capitalism and it seemed like Marx and Engels WERE wrong, at least on some points. But as I said in the previous post, that era was just a mirage.

One point to make is that capitalism IS the established system, so it doesn't have to rely on sudden changes. it can take the long perspective if it so chooses. And this is the tack it took after the New Deal reforms of the 30s. It was also the tack that it HAD to take because of the revolutionary fervor of the working class at that time. It's not a stretch to say that FDR saved capitalism from itself. If the PTBs had tried to immediately (within a decade or so) have tried to repeal the New Deal, they would have faced the revolution they delayed with the enactment OF the New Deal.

As to building a movement, there's nothing in Trotskyist thought that says you can't make a common cause with reformists on individual ISSUES or even a whole group of issues. The actual point of a United Front is twofold in strategy. To attempt to make gains for the workers by putting yourself in the vanguard (there's that word again) of the day-to-day struggles, but it's also to show the bankruptcy OF these incremental reforms as a way out of the problems of the working class under capitalism. That's why it's a basic tenet of a UF to keep your own freedom to agitate, propagandize, and yes, even criticize your front partners. Because history teaches that, at some point in the struggle, the reformists will make the mistake of trusting the capitalists and will betray the workers. At that point the movement or a sizable portion of it, even though it might be reformist in nature, will be subject to further radicalization IF your tendency has been proven correct in it's analyses of the situations that have arisen.