Mass Base of Social Democracy, second edition
H.W. Edwards’ Labor Aristocracy, Mass Base of Social Democracy (2nd Edition) is now available from Estuary Press. The republication of my mother’s 1978 book has been an eye opening experience for me. It revealed the scope and depth of her work as a writer in a whole new light. She was a Marxist in a time of widespread suppression of Marxism and the disintegration of the Communist movements in the western world. Her book was written before the collapse of the USSR, an event that seemed to make all of the intense earlier debates within Marxism irrelevant. Yet revisiting these debates, as she does in her book, shows that they were not then, nor are they now, irrelevant. The forty six years that have passed since the publication of the first edition of Labor Aristocracy by Aurora press in Sweden have not diminished the validity nor the relevance of its incisive critique one bit.
What Does It Mean to be a Leftist?
We are living in a time when right wing Republicans are condemning Democrats as being “leftists.” The notion that the Democratic Party sponsors of Israeli genocide against Palestine are “leftists” leaves real leftists, advocates of socialism and adherents to Marxism, dumbfounded and speechless. How did it happen that the revolutionary left has been so isolated and suppressed that these brain-dead rightists can usurp the term “leftist” to use in their fight against their ruling class rivals? When did the real meaning of being a leftist get lost here in the heart of the Empire?
The answer to this question lies in the growing size of the Labor Aristocracy in the post World War I era and in its support for western sponsored wars and colonialism. H.W. Edwards gives careful consideration to this subject and shows how, from World War I on, labor leaders, including many leftists, chose alliances with their own national ruling classes, taking up the burden of patriotically supporting their wars and their place in an imperialist world. This collaboration with international imperialism conceded the debate within the socialist movement to Social Democratic parties who actively sought to become partners in the imperialist system, instead of its enemy.
The outcome of these debates in the period before the collapse of the USSR set us on the path to our current situation in which the left can now be vilified in the public mind as genocide-supporting Democrats. The real left is no longer visible, nor part of the debates determining public policy, war and international relations. So, untangling this mess, intertwined deeply in these early debates, is necessary to find a way back into the public mind, and to take a real place in these debates. Labor Aristocracy, The Mass Base of Social Democracy provides a necessary step in understanding our current position in the heart of the Empire.
Revolution Moves South
Years before BRICS+ rose out of the struggle of the Global South against imperialist super-exploitation, H.W. Edwards understood that the revolutionary, anti-imperialist center had shifted from the advanced industrialized nations to the hinterlands, to the colonial and neo-colonial nations of the global south. Living in Ghana (1962-1967) during the last years of the Nkrumah regime, she learned from the revolutionary youth supporting Africa’s first independent nation, gaining insights into the relationships between imperialist nations and Africa, and between socialist countries of Eurasia and Africa. She reveals how racism and Western Social Democratic parties interacted with imperialism in the campaigns to maintain the imperialist grip on the colonial hinterland.
Once she understood this interaction on the ground of the independence struggle in Africa, she turned her attention to the Empire, to why western populations fail to mount any significant opposition to imperialism. Understanding the Labor Aristocracy’s pivotal role in silencing the voices of anti-imperialism is at the heart of her book.
For more about Hodee Waldstein Edwards, see her Autobiography 1988 published by Estuary Press in 2024.
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