Demogorgon wrote:

"My question after reading the link is this; has the proletariat overcome the counter-revolution? The text states today's working class has not been through "massive defeat". Does the proletariat need to experience a "massive" defeat to be massively defeated?"

A very important question.

I think the answer is situated in the framework of decomposition. Historically, the bourgeoisie has been able to maintain the upper hand in the sense that it has prevented the proletariat from rediscovering its own revolutionary perspective. At the same time, it has not managed to defeat the class in the sense of enrolling it in a decisive way behind its own political objectives.

Because the bourgeoisie cannot, in these circumstances, offer any cohesive ideological project around which to orientate society other than implementing the crisis, pervasive but piecemeal militarism, etc. and the proletariat can't either everything tends to fall apart, we end up with a slow disintegration of both classes along with the rest of society. That disintegration can absolutely destroy the proletariat - we can already see the disastrous impact of the various catastrophes in the Middle East which have both physically and ideologically decimated the local proletariat for decades to come.

I'd also point, as another example, how the "modernising" wing of the bourgeoisie in the Middle East (Nasserism, Ba'athism) which looked to national development, education, etc. as a mobilising force in bourgeois politics has retreated in the face of the growing Islamic death cults of ISIS/ISIL, etc. Even people like Hamas look almost progressive (in bourgeois terms of course) these days! We see the same deterioration in bourgeois ideology in the West. The mainstream parties are more and more looking like what they really are: different wings of an unofficial (but real) One Party State that all share more-or-less the same ideology (faux neo-liberalism, unofficial despotism, etc.) while conspiracy theorists, Christian and Islamic fundamentalists, racists, die-hard Stalinists and eco-warriors foam at the mouth at the periphery.

Fragmentation seems to sum up the social order at both the material and ideological level and in my opinion, it's no accident that in that environment the development of rational, useful discussion within and between the main internationalist currents in the working class (such as they are) seems more and more difficult.

So no, in today's environment, the class doesn't need to be "massively defeated" in order to be effectively erased as an historic force, a process which is already well underway. The question is whether the counter-tendencies that stimulate the authentic response of the class can become powerful enough to overcome the general trajectory of this society.

I think what I was wondering when I opened the thread is what can the implementation and impact of the bourgeoisie's ideological campaigns tell us about where we are in that development.