En relaci�n a Re: [CrashList] Self Determination- Support It!,
el 23 Aug 00, a las 10:11, TAHIR WOOD dijo:
> >>> "Carrol Cox" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 08/22 5:12 PM >>>
> The Chinese vocabulary is useful.
> Imperialism is the primary contradiction in the world today.
> And within that
> contradiction, at this time, the core imperialist power (the
> U.S. / EU /
> Japan) is the dominant pole.
>
> I think it is wrong to be fixated with this trite
> formulation. The fact that it somehow guided a number of
> 'successful' revolutions, most notably that of China, does
> not mean that it is anything more, epistemologically
> speaking, than a useful heuristic at certain opportune
> moments.
Wow. The fact that it somehow guided EVERY "successful" (at least to
the taste of the peoples involved, and of imperialists...) revolution
is the basic reason why this formulation deserves respect. Not only
that: it is the ONLY formulation where global capitalism is put at
the center of the analysis, and the kernel relationship that shapes
human events is cast to light. Would you suggest something better for
a substitution, cde?
It is just as easy to show that this particular
> hook invites the worst forms of opportunism to be hung
> thereupon, some of which have been extremely damaging to the
> socialist cause - starting with Chinese foreign policy which
> pronounced some of the worst third world dictatorships to be
> 'anti-imperialist' and therefore deserving of support, then
> leading to Mao's abortion of a 'three worlds' theory, which
> led in turn to Deng's turn towards an alliance eventually
> with the US because of the greater threat of 'Soviet
> imperialism'.
Your facts are wrong, cde.
1. Last things first: the "three worlds" theory was not generated in
China. Moreover, there has never existed a "second world" in the
classic formula. The first one to coin it was the Gaullist economist
Fran�ois Perroux, in France, by the late 1950s. He pointed out (from
the point of view of a clever imperialist, who was engaged in De
Gaulle's policies of contesting Anglo dominance within imperialism)
that most people on the globe were in the situation of the "Tiers
�tat" before the French Revolution, that is they had to revolt
against the regime or die as a social group. "Tiers �tat' was
naturally recasted as "Tiers Monde".
2, The obsession of the Chinese with a Soviet attack (which does not
seem to have been completely misled, or so it seems decades away from
the events) made them betray the principle behind the "three worlds"
theory. The idea that the Soviet Union was some kind of "Second
World" has nothing, nothing to do with the theory. It was this fear
which made them support criminals such as Pinochet. But allow me to
remember that, across the Andes, people who were against the "Third
World" thesis and were staunch "democrats", supported Videla -our own
Pinochet- because if he was toppled a "fascist" would assume power.
Not only conservatives, also liberals and even the local Communist
Party followed that line (the CP, on the other hand, protected
imports of agricultural products by the USSR according to dealings
that had been made by Per�n).
The following section might be called "on thinking formally". I will
attempt a piecemeal refutation. Tahir says,
If anti-imperialism is the "only freedom that
> counts", as Nestor incredibly said, then this means that
> even the most repressive regime that opposes imperialism
> deserves some support from 'progressives'.
which I guess he is repeating from Trotsky's writings on Brazil and
Latin America in general, and I agree with. Then he extracts the
following formalistic and antidialectical conclusion (not everybody
on CrashList is forced to be a dialectical thinker, but Tahir
considers himself a Marxist, that's the problem):
But this strategy
> has no way to get from anti-imperialism to anti-capitalism -
> we are asked to take it on faith that the one is a
> precondition for the other. However not only is there no
> evidence that this strategy can work, but we are misled from
> the start by a pseudo-epistemological category, that of the
> 'principal contradiction'. But the only freedom that counts
> is humanity against capitalism.
On the global arena, anti-imperialism is the highest form of anti-
capitalism in the obvious way that anti-imperialist struggles help to
bring down the rate of profit and to quell the extraction of surplus
capital. This is written down on the first Marxist primer in this
field, Lenin's _Imperialism_.
And on the local arena, struggle against foreign control of the
country is the first line in the battle for socialism because there
cannot be socialism in a country where people do not consider
themselves worthy of ruling themselves. And this, Tahir, is not a
"socialist" but a "national" task. My position is that the only way
to attain these goals is through socialist means, and that socialism
can only be reached by national struggle. You establish a China Wall
between both parts of a whole, and this takes you to all sort of
confused mistakes.
On to the next line: I would accept that the "principal
contradiction" is not a "category" (not that I worry too much on what
is a category and what is not), but I also understand that it is a
useful device to focus attention on what is the central issue at
stake at class struggle (or class war) in the current world. In fact,
this issue is the one where that contradiction "humanity against
capitalism" that Tahir cherishes so much (more on this below) reaches
a concrete, human, expression. It is the very way in which that
struggle gets embodied.
The basic laws of physics, as learnt in high school, can not be
directly applied to everyday life, they must be fine tuned and this
is a whole task in itself implying college, practice, trial and
error, and so on. In the same way, general formulae in politics
cannot be directly applied but through adequate mediations (would you
consider the cathegory of "mediation" a "pseudo-epistemological
category" too, Tahir, only because it provides us with the link from
your formulations in vacuum and the concrete realities of everyday
political struggle? I guess you wouldn't, among others because this
is a well established word in the tradition of classic European
philosophy, would you?). With the same level of political impact I
would say that "the only freedom that counts" is life against death,
Eros against Thanatos, order against disorder, and that our struggle
is, in the end, a struggle against the operation of the Second
Principle of Thermodynamics (I am serious here). Would that help us
step ahead a single inch? I doubt it.
Surprisingly enough (for Tahir, not for me) we however adjust as
glove to hand when he states that
No-one should push the
> responsibility for revolution onto the backs of third world
> peoples - the way to help them is to unite with them to
> destroy capitalism, in the US, in Japan, etc.
The first way to help us is not to try to understand our realities
with your own, historically developed, categories. I would be very
glad to see the backs of third world peoples relieved from the burden
that has been put on us. My own back is at stake, and ouch it is
aching lots! Yes, Tahir, do your own revolutions in the central
formations, let us step into socialism with you heading the march. I
would only feel relieved to discover that this is happening. But
while this does not happen (and it has not happened as yet, thus
leaving the first great socialist revolution isolated and waiting for
a German general upheaval that never took place), then I would ask
you to be more humble with the concrete, full blooded, still
struggling and embattled activity of those who, like me and many
others, are offering a refreshing antidote to the kind of marxism
that makes actual life vanish in a thin air of abstractions. But let
us not exchange insults. I will also add something else, and it is
that if those movements that you see "springing up everywhere" do not
understand the intimate connection between struggle for socialism and
struggle against imperialism, then they are doomed to irrelevance. I
am afraid that, without the least intention, your positions push
those movements precisely towards that irrelevance.
N�stor Miguel Gorojovsky
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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