At 21/05/01 16:07 -0700, you wrote:
>>>Now the IMF might become a "world Fed," managing the world's money, but
>>>I think that the US power elite would oppose that. It likes the way the
>>>actual Fed manages things.
>
>Chris B. writes:
>>Sure. Change will not come without a battle.
>
>it doesn't seem like a battle we want to get involved in, since it
>involves a conflict between rich-country capitalist elites.
Why should that be beneath the dignity of the privileged but progressive
citizens of the hegemonic capitalist country of the world?!
Even if what Jim describes is the true reality of the global economic
system and not merely the surface reality, why should that preclude
progressives taking up this battle if it is a battle that must be fought?
I know Jim Devine is no dogmatist and I ask him to appreciate that the
blows might fall on the sack but they are aimed elsewhere. There is a
Trotskyist opinion in marxism space that the dispute between the rich
imperialist countries of the Second World War was no business of the
proletariat, and the alliance of the Soviet Union with Britain and the USA
was an opportunist alliance, and that the world united front against
fascism was an opportunist united front.
Now when it is the bounden duty of all progressives in the world,
*especially* those in the USA, (who also happen to dominate English
speaking email lists) to further a world united front against US
hegemonism, this viewpoint is extremely harmful and adds to the inertia of
any serious attempt to integrate theory with practice, which of course is
always difficult.
Let us go back to Jim's proposition.
>it doesn't seem like a battle we want to get involved in, since it
>involves a conflict between rich-country capitalist elites
That zealous, even at times over-zealous, Marxist, Lenin, argued "Why does
it follow that 'the great, victorious, world' revolution can and must
employ only revolutionary methods? It does not follow at all."
[The Importance of Gold, November 1921]
He personally dirtied his own hand:
"I very well recall the scene when, at the Smolny, it was my lot to hand an
act to Svinhufvud - which in Russian means 'swinehead' - the representative
of the Finnish bourgeoisie, who played the part of a hangman. He amiably
shook my hand, we exchanged compliments. How unpleasant that was!"
[On the Party Programme, March 1919]
Back to world strategy at present, is the following injunction out of date
for progressives enjoying the comfort of living in the world hegemonic state?
"a rule which will remain fundamental with us for a long time until
socialism finally triumphs all over the world: we must take advantage of
the antagonisms and the contradictions that exist between the two
imperialisms, the two groups of capitalist states"
[Speech to a Meeting of Activists 6th December 1920]
Chris Burford
London
