POSTING RULES & NOTES
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what's his facebook link? this is great, want to share
On Sun, Nov 1, 2015 at 9:51 AM, Louis Proyect via Marxism <
marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu> wrote:
> POSTING RULES & NOTES
> #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
> #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived.
> #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern.
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>
> (Posted to FB by John Game)
>
> A reel off prompted by the justified anger many supporters of the Syrian
> revolution feel about the official positions of many on the left and in the
> Labour movement:
>
> as someone who has been an anti-Stalinist all their life I'm used to the
> fact that large sections of the left are not. For me these issues are
> connected to people not having enough confidence to fight for
> themselves-and thus putting their hopes either in particular leaders or
> particular states to do it for them. One of the truly alarming things about
> the last couple of decades has been the extent to which stalinism has
> re-invented itself-it had been believed by many that the end of the Soviet
> bloc would kill off these kinds of illusions-I think we were missing the
> point Marx once made about religion-that if you were to want to abolish it
> you'd have to abolish the conditions that give rise to the need for it-and
> the conditions that gave rise to the need amongst people to look for
> substitutes for their own agency were not abolished by the collapse of the
> Soviet Union. Hence the really shocking way in which some even look to
> Putin as some kind of a saviour-an authoritarian no better whatsoever then
> a Modi in India. But, and here's the problem, in India you'll find many on
> the left who absolutely despise Modi but have enourmous illusions in Putin
> as some kind of an 'alternative' to US hegenomy-why?-because the dominant
> forms of reformism in the global south were premissed on the idea that the
> weakening of the dominant western imperialism gave space for
> alternatives-some of this was reflected in the old ideas of the non-aligned
> movement (though its interesting that many who espouse those ideas now once
> saw the non-aligned movement as simply an illusion-as indeed in many ways
> it was). All across the world this has produced a left that's fragmented,
> an internationalism that's incoherent, and a dreadful paucity of a real
> movement of solidarity for the actually existing and on-going revolutionary
> movements we've seen over the last decade-worse then this a constant
> clamour of slander and abuse directed at those who try and raise these
> issues.
>
> I believe these arguments need to be taken on, head on, and I have no time
> at all for people who think its sectarian to raise these issues. Its vital.
> But at the same time, I think you have to understand the roots in despair -
> like all forms of counter-revolutionary ideology it thrives on feeling of
> hopelessness-there were of course plenty of sociopaths who kissed the boots
> of Stalin because they liked the thought of those boots trampling on human
> faces forever. But most kissed the boots of Stalin because they sincerely
> believed that these were the only boots that could kick Hitler. Today we
> face a more grotesque situation (what as Javaad said I once called
> Stalinism with Stalinism)-where people don't even believe (well aside from
> the truly confused or strange) that any of these regimes represent
> socialist values-but think the best they can hope for is some sort of
> 'balance' - in effect a new Congress of Vienna (a reactionary post-Napoleon
> balance drawn up by the European great powers in the 19th century) this
> time with Putin and-who else?-to ask the question is to reveal the
> ideological incoherence-perhaps General Sisi? Or those currently locking up
> and killing Trade Unionists in Tehran? Or Modi? A man who like Putin who
> knows how to deal with troublesome Muslims-perhaps these people doing a
> deal with America will lead to a better world? To ask the question is to
> reveal the bloody aburdity of it.
>
> Most people voting for Corbyn desperately want change and I'm with them.
> But I also want to argue with them about how we can get that change. But
> you can't win that argument if you line up with the dominant powers-who
> have no intention whatsoever of helping anyway and never did. I also think
> there is a difficulty with an understandable argument about priorities-I
> wholly understand the position of people who say-My priority is the Syrian
> revolution so I'll support any robber of
