"Protest Fatigue"

Well, we can only really expect the street protest & molotov stuff to go on for so long. If the demonstrators can do whatever they can in the meantime to cripple the ability of the state to stop the movement, that will be the most that we can realistically hope for.

What is really going to determine the future of the movement in greece is the expansion of assemblies & occupations, and the broadening of these dimensions of the movement to include greater numbers of workers, the unemployed, their families etc.

We're all (obviously) rooting for them though. And it's really premature to talk about any sort of revolution, but I think that they have really opened up a lot of people's eyes as to what is possible, and that moments of collective strength for our class (if albeit somewhat unconscious) are not unreachable.

Why is calling for revolution naive?

The failure of this spontaneist mass strike strategy should have been obvious to most leftists a long time ago.

http://www.cpgb.org.uk/worker/495/marxism.html

Only four of those five tendencies have a solid existence, even if marginalized (the spat between Trotskyists and Left-Communists is little more than a right-left schism within Tendency D). One of them needs to be rebuilt from scratch... badly.

Jacob,

Be more explicit as I am missing your point here.

Within these limited definitions I see myself as part of an insubstantial, if more modern, tendency under 'D' but could not agree that trotskyism sits within this.

I note that the quote at the end refers incorrectly to the International Workers of the World rather than the Industrial Workers of the World.

The Greek 'riots' may see some development if linked to the growing rebellion of workers currently constrained by the trade unions (see Lib Com/ICC/CWO posts on the Union HQ occupation) but we are a long way from any revolutionary trigger.

They accomplished a decent waste of our limited resources (what with court costs and all) and allowed the cops to gain another opportunity to perfect their crowd control techniques (and the FBI to experiment with getting better infiltrators/ informants). I'd say 4, 8, or 12 years ago more interesting things happened at DNC/RNC protests that I would think of favorably.

To name just a few other revolts of potentially more significance than the Greek events... (within your lifetime)
Chiapas 1994
Argentina 2001
Oaxaca 2006

LOL!

While, JR's post and reasoning is apropos of nothing, the language and logic is ridiculous enough to inspire me to reply.

From his link...

<SARCASM>And yes! This "Hegalian Marxist Left" prevented all the other syndicalist and anti-state communist folks from forming a political party and winning. That's why the revolution failed! It's "obvious". Luxemburg or Gorter or Trotsky or someone just ideologically disarmed all those others who would have otherwise built an alternative to Kautsky. So it is "obvious" that the strategy for anti-state communist revolution in the German Revolution, which these great thinkers spearheaded, failed because of "their over-reliance on the spontaneity of the mass ", whereas if these power thinkers had listened to the SPBG and mobilized their Hegalian power thoughts using its strategic insight ... then the revolution they controlled could just have succeeded. </SARCASM>

In general, I find it rather rather repugnant to analyze historical events as a series of "failed strategies" rather than looking at their overall historical trajectories. In the case of the linked article, this approach is notably ridiculous and ham-handed. In the situation that the linked article analyzes, the German revolution, the mix of all tendencies and the historical conditions together added up to a failed revolution. Gorter, Luxemburgs and others (but not Trotsky) managed to be on the side of the revolution but even here these individual had substantially different politics. As far as I know, Luxemburg did not reject parties as such but simply split from the German Social Democratic party at the point that it became counter-revolutionary. Gorter's rejection of party organizing was strong tied to the way that the German Social Democratic Party, which previously was seen as the party of all revolutionaries as well as Lenin's Bolsheviks, became parties of counter-revolution. The inclusion of Trotsky in the mix is simply embarrassing. The politics and activity of all these actors can't be crudely reduced to a "strategy" but rather needs be seen is the result of historical Marxism's development (for good and ill, naturally) - at least if we're going to have a useful analysis of these events.

Anyway, I think that most leftists reject "spontaneism", so there is hardly anything to worry about concerning this "strategy" - those few who do articulate "spontaneism" are not the most active enemies of the left's effort to create parties and "lay foundations". However, both "organizingism" and "spontaneism" will remain equally "failed strategies" until one or another of them succeed in creating communism on a world scale.

Finally, aside from the events in Greece not having strikes as their central focus, I haven't heard about there being a huge contingent of "spontaneists" represented in the events. There is the simple fact that the movement appeared spontaneously (which by definition shows that the movement was not a "strategy"). This may hearten the small group of "spontaneists" who previously were non-organizing there. But I don't think these "spontaneists" had much of any effect on the efforts of SPGB affiliates or anyone else to organize or "build foundations". Perhaps other factors were at work.

Direct action, mass protests, mass strikes, general strikes, etc. only work when considered on the level of tactics. As a matter of strategy (the strategy of "D" and "E"), they just plain fail. The "protest fatigue" that is the title of this thread illustrates this point succinctly.

What I am advocating on the basis of strategy for building up this "revolutionary trigger" is something that is slowly being rediscovered by the class-strugglist left: the Kautskyist strategy of "C."

Despite your note of sarcasm, what you've explicitly said here contains more truth than you think. The syndicalists and anti-state communists ALSO employed the same strategy, albeit in a more overt form. The "Hegelian Marxist Left," as best exemplified by today's Trots and ultra-lefts, continues to prevent the worker class AS A WHOLE from forming its own MASS party.

Check out the history of one SDKPiL: this was the circle-sect she belonged to long before the Russian Revolution. This circle-sect refused to fold into the RSDLP.

Lenin once remarked that a very revolutionary Kautsky himself warned that a split with opportunism would be necessary should it become more formalized.

Trotsky's earlier works, his ineptitude at party-building within the RSDLP, his waffling back and forth, etc. all indicate his position between "C" and "D" (a bit inclined towards the latter, IMO, given the "transitional" strategy of the Fourth International re-hashing Rosa Luxemburg).

Neither Luxemburg nor Gorter can be meaningfully described as "Hegelian Marxists." I don't see the point. Also, Gorter never rejected "party organizing."