The spectre of social democracy: a symptomatic reading of the power resources approach

Nowak, Joerg

Abstract

The subject of historical cognition is the battling, oppressed class itself. In Marx it steps forward as the final enslaved and avenging class, which carries out the work of emancipation in the name of generations of downtrodden to its conclusion. This consciousness, which for a short time made itself felt in the ‘Spartacus’, was objectionable to social democracy from the very beginning. In the course of three decades it succeeded in almost completely erasing the name of Blanqui, whose distant thunder [Erzklang] had made the preceding century tremble. It contented itself with assigning the working-class the role of the savior of future generations. It thereby severed the sinews of its greatest power. Through this schooling the class forgot its hate as much as its spirit of sacrifice. For both nourish themselves on the picture of enslaved forebears, not on the ideal of the emancipated heirs (Walter Benjamin, 1974: Thesis XII).

Citation

Nowak, J. (2018). The spectre of social democracy: a symptomatic reading of the power resources approach. Global Labour Journal, 9(3), 353-360. https://doi.org/10.15173/glj.v9i3.3713

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Sep 30, 2018
• Online Publication Date: Sep 30, 2018
• Publication Date: Sep 30, 2018
• Deposit Date: Oct 8, 2018
• Publicly Available Date: Oct 8, 2018
• Electronic ISSN: 1918-6711
• Publisher: McMaster University
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 9
• Issue: 3
• Pages: 353-360
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.15173/glj.v9i3.3713
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1150821
• Publisher URL: https://mulpress.mcmaster.ca/globallabour/article/view/3713