Here follows my delayed response to Nestor on
anti-imperialism.
> 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.
Yes, but we need to look at the nature of these revolutions.
I would dispute that the Russian revolution was guided
mostly by anti-imperialism - it was firstly a
bourgeois-democratic revolution and secondly a socialist
one. What it soon mutated into was a kind of bureaucratic
"state capitalist" formation, which with a great degree of
success, and coercion, completed the capitalist
transformation of Russia. (There is so much more that still
needs to be said on that subject.) The anti-imperialist
revolutions that you refer to, which were based firstly on
Lenin's theory of imperialism and sometimes on Mao's much
more explicitly political formulations on the subject, never
showed any potential whatsoever for advancing beyond the
same capitalist project. This unfortunately is turning out
to be as true of Cuba as it is of China. It has been claimed
that this is the only viable model of development that
emerged in the twentieth century. It is not - I'll return to
this issue below. It is one model that has showed some
spectacular successes, notably China itself, but this is
only valid if you accept the capitalist-productivist and
non-democratic limitations which the model imposes. Among
the drawbacks linked to this must be mentioned: the highly
unfortunate equation of socialism and marxism with a
repressive form of capitalism, which even today still
discredits marxism in general; a rate of environmental
degradation which is possibly even worse than that of
western capitalism; a repulsive emphasis on national
interests masquerading as anti-imperialism. This last helped
to discredit both the Soviet Union and China, as well as all
the parties linked to them, amongst the labouring poor of
the world, including the third world. So a model of success
yes - but with successes like this who needs failures?
> 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?
Marx put global capitalism at the centre of the analysis
already and he didn't even talk about imperialism as a
separate category. This is because global capitalism or
imperialism is already entailed in the marxist analysis of
capitalism. If this were not the case, Marx would have had
no need to write about such topics as India or colonialism.
Capitalism on a world scale develops by feeding off the
non-capitalist world until there is nothing of that left.
This is the way that the fall of the rate of profit is
delayed or retarded - I have no doubt. But this does not
imply in turn an anti-imperialist struggle that is not
simultaneously a thoroughly anti-capitalist one. (Note: if
the anti-imperialist struggle is entirely identical with the
anti-capitalist one, then there is no need to talk about it
at all.) Why is this important? Because the opposition to
imperialism as ideology and as theory of the struggle does
not in itself lead to a more favourable context for
socialism. As I argue below, it may in fact lead to a much
less favourable one. This is because an anti-imperialist
struggle that does not oppose itself directly to capitalism
at the same time is not fighting imperialism at all:
imperialism just becomes a shadow, a phantom. The struggle
in fact just becomes one group of people against another
group of people (the foreigners, not even the foreign
bourgeoisie at that). Where is the mode of production in
this. And if the mode of production is not in this then how
can imperialism be? (You will need to understand your own
points about mediation that you introduce below to grasp
this point I'm afraid.)
We don't have to get into all the obvious horror stories
(Pol Pot, etc.) to show that anti-imperialism is not a good
in itself. Actually an excellent example is Iran. All the
leftist parties showed deference to the mullahs during the
struggle. Why? Because they were anti-imperialist of course
and, as all Iranian Maoists and Leninists knew, the
principal contradiction in Iran was the people against
imperialism. So here we have the classic case. Support the
anti-imperialist struggle and you get two for the price of
one: national liberation and a giant step closer to
socialism! But unfortunately the theory was wrong as it
always is and the leftists got slaughtered for their
troubles. And not only is socialism now more remote than it
ever was in this semi-autarchic regime, but there are even
fewer democratic freedoms than there were under the Shah. A
bad bargain in the end, it seems.
Now just a couple more specific points on all this, before I
again get accused of vagueness or abstraction:
1. Only where the direct, head-on struggle against
capitalism is possible can the end to class society (and by
implication imperialism) be brought a little nearer in time.
I presume I don't need to spell out what this means - but
basically I am speaking about insurrection.
2. It IS necessary to point out that this is not possible in
all places and times. In some contexts the working class and
the revolutionary people need instead to fight for bourgeois
democratic freedoms, better working conditions and the
strengthening of civil organisations that are beneficial to
the people. This situation is typical of countries that are
backward in those particular respects. The point of this is
not reform but strengthening of the conditions that are
necessary for socialism. It doesn't mean that one becomes a
democrat either - it means creating the social conditions,
and especially expanding the cognitive and affective
resources, that will be required in the head to head with
capital, i.e. in becoming more human rather than more like a
machine.
3. What else is advocated here? Complete unity of those
fighting against capitalism across all national boundaries.
There is absolutely no marxist basis for uniting with one's
'own' bourgeoisie against the foreigner in the name of
anti-imperialism (But that is exactly what happens in
national struggles - 'our' bourgeoisie somehow becomes
benign in relation to 'theirs' - hello Karl Kautsky, mentor
of Lenin!).
4. The domain where direct anti-capitalist struggle is
impossible is shrinking all the time. This is because of
globalisation. The third world is moving into the US and the
US is moving into the third world. In India, for example,
there is downsizing, electronic surveillance in the
workplace, lengthening of the working week, speedup, loss of
purchasing power, outsourcing, cottage industry replacing
outdated textile industry, etc. together with real workers
movements. While in the US there are increasing rates of
surplus inner city populations, illiteracy, linguistic and
cultural diversity, urban degradation, loss of freedom of
movement, obscurantism, nationalism and other phenomena
thought to be more third world in nature. Let's not get too
attached to our stereotyped categories here.
5. A very specific myth needs to be put aside in relation to
the above point: this is that autarchic quasi-marxist
movements are more effective in developing capitalism and
that this constitutes an additional justification for their
existence (i.e. beyond the fact that they will somehow 'lead
to' socialism at some point in the future). But there are
and have always been other models of authoritarian
capitalism. South Korea is a recent one. But Franco's Spain
is an earlier one. Who says that the Stalinists would have
done a better job of capitalist modernisation? (I'm not
hoping to revive the Spain thread again). As Bordiga says:
Capitalism is the agrarian revolution. It doesn't require
bourgeois democracy at all. It can be done by authoritarian
rightists just as well as by authoritarian 'leftists'. Each
one of these also sets back the socialist cause as much as
the other (but only one discredits marxism).
> Your facts are wrong, cde. 1. Last things first: the
"three worlds" theory was not generated in
China.
It seems that the 'three worlds' notion was outlined by Mao
at a talk circa 1974. Unfortunately I don't have the
reference now, but basically it identified the US and USSR
as the two main imperialist powers (the first world), with
other secondary or semi-imperialist powers including Europe,
Japan and Canada (the second world), and finally the third
world as the countries oppressed by imperialism, which
included China. This view, which sees the US and USSR as
equally imperialist was very useful to Deng, who even wrote
a paper, which I used to have in my possession, called
something like "Mao Tsetung's three worlds theory is a major
contribution to marxism" (I kid you not!). This clearly
opens the way to an alliance with the US. I can see that you
are not aware of these occurrences, so you will have to
check it out for yourself some time. But really it is only a
particularly stark illustration of the dangers of
opportunism that I referred to and which can and do flow
from this notion of anti-imperialism all the time.
> 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.
See above for the source of your misunderstanding here.
> It was this fear
which made them support criminals such as Pinochet.
Oh give me a break!
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.
I've never cared much for Trotsky actually. All that stuff
about tons of concrete and steel and the militarisation of
labour and all made socialism seem like a great big
capitalist concentration camp to me.
> 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_.
"Highest form"? Because, according to Lenin, imperialism is
"the highest stage" of capitalism? What does all this
"highest" mean when thinking formally, as you put it? How
much has the rate of profit in the global capitalist system
fallen after a hundred years of successful anti-imperialist
revolutions then?
> 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.
There cannot be socialism "in a country" at all. You should
know that.
> And this, Tahir, is not a
"socialist" but a "national" task.
Too true. But this is precisely the problem. By
accommodating the socialist project to the nationalist one,
one helps to instill the nationalist and patriotic
consciousness, which is properly anathema to the socialist
one. This can be seen in the patriotism of the Russians and
the Chinese, who want "communist" leaders to make THEIR
countries great in the world!
> 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.
But they don't form parts of a whole, except as antagonistic
opposites. "Socialism can only be reached by national
struggle" is a dogmatic formula that has never been proven
in practice once. And I can show you many examples where
socialism has been pushed way off the agenda by SUCCESSFUL
national struggles. South Africa is a wonderful example of
this. You like theorems, so here's one for you: the more
successful the national struggle the greater the suppression
of socialism after that. I would venture to bet that there
are NO demonstrable counter examples to this. This might
explain why there is anti-capitalist action in the US and
the UK, but none, zero, in South Africa right now: because
there is no living memory of a national struggle in the
former cases, with all the noxious sentiment that that
generates.
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.
On the contrary, it distracts attention away from class
struggle and posits the other nationality as the enemy
("yankee", "the great satan", etc.). When the IRA plant
bombs in London, are they uniting with the English working
class then? If not, why not?
Imperialism as the principal contradiction is a useful
device, or heuristic, and one that has guided action very
well in the past, but unfortunately not in the direction of
socialism. Jacques Camatte's phrase "the wandering of
humanity" is very apt here. We can be guided by all sorts of
catch phrases and pseudo-theories that will keep humanity
wandering in the desert of capitalism for another hundred
years, from one chimera to another, or possibly until its
own species extinction. I also suspect that with the rise of
globalisation these successes are a thing of the past
anyway. Gee, maybe there is an even higher stage of
capitalism than the "highest" one?
> 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.
How can the support for an indigenous NATIONAL capitalism
unite humanity against capitalism? This is so Orwellian!
> 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?).
I have no doubt that imperialism is somehow a mediation of
capitalism in the context of finance capital,
post-coloniality, the nation state, etc. If what this means
is that the imperialist system is the FORM in which
capitalism appears, then I agree without hesitation, but
your argument is undone by this. Your argument implies that
one needs to attack the form rather than the substance, and
this is EXACTLY what tends to happen in national struggles.
The 'other' becomes the source of oppression, rather than
the mode of production being the source of oppression. The
struggle 'immediately' (and I use this word in its full
philosophic sense) is shrouded in mystifications of patria
and motherhood, the gods, the ancestors and the power of
good over evil and all the rest of it. The struggle itself
encloses the commodity form in a second, even more
impenetrable layer of mystery than before, the outcome of
which will always be some permutation of chauvinism,
terrorism and despotism. It is interesting to watch the
nationalist consciousness playing itself out in Zimbabwe
right now, how Mugabe dances to the tune of imperialism when
it serves his own class interests, then when it doesn't he
invokes the glorious memory of the struggle against the
settlers, emphasising their alien otherness, and the
responsibilities of the foreign power (Britain) in shoring
up his rotting nationalist regime.
The "principal contradiction" argument actually asks one to
accept much more than the notion of mediation does. (I know
because I have argued this so many times myself and at one
stage I almost knew "On Contradiction" off by heart.) It is
more mechanistic. It says that national liberation through
the struggle against imperialism is a precondition for
socialism. It never suggests, however, that the dismantling
of nation states is itself a precondition for socialism. And
this is where its fundamentally bourgeois nature is exposed.
In other words socialism can be achieved within the context
of the state (forgetting entirely that the state is the
instrument of class domination in marxist theory). How is
this remarkable contortion achieved? By a sleight of hand of
course. Bordiga exposed this in his analysis of China. Some
form of state is of course required in transition from
capitalism to socialism, the state form that reflects the
dictatorship of the proletariat. But what then happens is a
theoretical conflation of the dictatorship of the
proletariat with socialism itself. So you then have the
bastard theoretical notion of the "socialist state".
> 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.
This is really the low point of your message, Nestor. When
Marx theorised the nature of capital, there were already
nation states, colonies, and all sorts of other epiphenomena
of capital in existence already. It was never suggested that
each one of these had to be addressed in some particular
sequence for a struggle against capitalism to follow. The
struggle against capitalism is already and simultaneously a
struggle against all of them. But the
metaphysical-mechanistic distortions Lenin introduced (after
learning this way of thinking from Kautsky) about the
"highest stage" and the "laws" of economics and "science of
revolution", etc. which demand that you remove this nut
before you replace that bolt, etc. is something else
altogether. You haven't even noticed that the notion of
mediation is more subtle than this scientistic rubbish. It
demands strategy and tactics, which are based on seeing the
substance underlying the forms and how these forms dance
their own dance of veils and illusion. The "highest stage"
notion is an attempted freeze frame: Let's stop the dance so
that we can watch it more clearly!
>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 live in Cape Town, South Africa, Nestor. I think that
makes me more 'third world' than you, but not in the clich�d
or stereotyped sense.
> 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.
No it makes it live again, after almost a hundred years of
mechanistic vulgarisation.
> But let
us not exchange insults.
I wouldn't insult you. You are too clearly dedicated to the
cause of socialism. But I think you should let go of some
things that are just in the way of that project now. A
writer that I admire has observed that the trouble with
marxism is that it has become a culture. You should satisfy
yourself that you are not enmeshed in something that has
mutated into merely another limiting and repressive culture.
> 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.
I will pass your message on to them.
Regards
Tahir
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