Working-class defeats were contingent, not intrinsic to capitalism’s logic

Evidence

The failure of these struggles to make any long-term inroads into the power of capital was a contingent one, reflecting not the immanent logic of the system but the dominance of the Western working-class movement by organizations and ideologies which, whether stemming from the social democratic or the Stalinist tradi­ tions, were pledged to achieving partial reforms within a framework of class collaboration. The intervention of the French Communist Party to end the general strike of May-June 1968 was repeated on numerous occasions elsewhere, from the Social Contract struck by the British Trade Union Congress with the Labour government of … 1974-9 to the 1977 Moncloa pact through which the Spanish Communist and Socialist Parties pledged their support to Franco’s heirs. Class compromises of this kind allowed Western capital to weather the great recessions of the mid-1970s and early 1980s and indeed to use them to restructure and to rationalize. — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism, 615

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Milgrom’s institutional analysis and to Marxist debates about whether capitalist crises are immanent or contingent — a classic base/superstructure and class-collaboration question. — connects to: Capitalism triumphed by cultivating divisions rather than erasing them within the working class — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 267; Capitalism’s historical contingency implies socialism’s failure is not final.; American capitalism rolled back the New Deal due to a weak working class (+4 more)
• DEEPTHINKING: This is the core historical-materialist counterclaim: defeats of the left are contingent political outcomes, not proof of capitalism’s inevitability. Dense and worth sitting with.

Broader Connections

• Capitalism’s historical contingency implies socialism’s failure is not final. #expands (0.80)
• Capitalism triumphed by cultivating divisions rather than erasing them within the working class #complicates (0.75) — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 267
• American capitalism rolled back the New Deal due to a weak working class #exemplifies (0.75)
• Capitalism differentiated peoples into racial categories rather than homogenizing them #complicates (0.70) — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 205