The Crisis of Bourgeois Ideology and of Opportunism

Book excerpt: The second part of the book series, The Crisis of Bourgeois Ideology, and the Doctrine of the Mode of Thinking, deals with the essential variants of bourgeois ideology since the reorganization of international capitalist production in the 1990s. In view of the growing capitalist crisis chaos and a widespread ideological disorientation, the emphasis in this second part is on the critique of the most important opportunist currents of the present day. Opportunism seeks to dissuade the working-class and people's movements from class struggle and scientific socialism. It exerts a harmful influence on parts of the international revolutionary and working-class movement. Every politically thinking, responsibly acting person must ask themselves today where they stand in regard to the globe-spanning capitalist system. Along with absurd wealth, it produces misery for millions and puts the basis of human life at risk. Does one howl with the wolves then and bury the dream of a liberated society for good, only because socialism had to accept a temporary defeat due to the revisionist betrayal in the Soviet Union or in China? Or does one help the gigantic progress of scientific knowledge and practical achievements in social production to break through against the maelstrom of pragmatism and opportunism, and join in the necessary revolutionary transformation of society?