Allow me to reassure Mark first of all. Will begin by the end of his posting.
En relación a RE: [CrashList] Rogues and sovereignty I,
el 10 Feb 01, a las 18:24, Mark Jones dijo:
> I'm not at all suggesting suicidal, isolationist activites or ultra-left
> immolationism. I'm merely pointing to the historical realities, which you
> have yet to come to terms with.
My dear Mark, I am sure you would probably be the last person to suggest
"suicidal, isolationist activites or ultra-left immolationism". That is out of
the question and if I did not know you quite well by now, I would be upset by
your suggestion that I am implying anything like that.
This does not mean, however, that I accept your idea that I have not "come to
terms" with some particular historical reality. There must be a thrillion
zillion facts I must come to terms with, of course, but this time I am afraid,
instead, that this time a sweeping generalization took you too high in the
atmosphere of theoretic prediction, with the resulting risk of asphyxia.
If I understand you well, when you are saying that
> ... this huge wave of anti-colonial and national liberation struggles,
...
> have produced a pitifully smaller revolutionary wave in our own time.
I am afraid you misunderstood me. I did not mean that we should _celebrate_ the
sad results of the wave of revolutionary action that, under the worst
conditions, changed the face of the world during the last century.
Decolonization was almost always followed by recolonization, albeit under a
disguise. Of course. However, this "disguise" is not a minor issue. The
difference between formal colonies (that is, occupied lands) and "informal
empires" is not to be disparaged, and if only this slight difference were the
result of the enormous wave of heroism that was defeated in more senses than
one during the last three decades, it would be worth defending. Not
celebrating. Defeats are not to be celebrated, not on my book at least.
> What is
> there to celebrate? Patrick Bond's struggle for stand-pipes?
This is not what _I_ think, as both Patrick and you know. I think that the
answer to the tactical victories of our enemies does not reside in proposing
that "in the meantime" we should struggle for stand-pipes (which, by the way,
are not unimportant for concrete human beings...). What I want to call _your_
attention to, instead, is to the fact that it is not from a general view of the
workings of the global system that we can develop concrete weapons and tactics
for our struggle. That is, I shun generalizations such as your
> The "new conditions
> in which imperialism was forced to operate" have been almost entirely successful
> in castrating the working classes of the peripheries.
Sure? In my own country, imperialism was forced to _destroy_ a militant working
class that did not allow to be emasculated. Elsewhere, in countries where the
working class is a new class, with mostly a peasant background, we are
witnessing a growing wave of labour militancy. Witness the Korean workers, the
Brazilian "landless" (who are militantly taken away from the pool of cheap
labour around the cities by a movement that resettles them in the lands of the
great landowners, thus questioning the regime of bourgeois property and helping
workers _with_ a job to struggle against a diminished army of reserve).
I would rather say (but don't take me too seriously, because this is just
another sweeping generalization) that if any working class has been emasculated
after 1945 (and even before) that working class is NOT the working class in the
peripheries. But this is not the point, however. The point is that according to
you,
> you [Nestor] have proved my [Mark's]
> point for me: not only does Argentina today have LESS sovereignty (formal and
> real) than a century ago, there is also much less mass political awareness and
> less mass resistance now than then.
How on Earth you reached this conclusion is still a mystery to me. But the ways
of Allah are unfathomable. I bow at His might (sorry, Allah seems to have been
male).
Now, of course Argentina is today a bloody clown who puts the head through an
opening in a wall, waiting for the next ball to hit in the face. But
"Argentina" is an abstraction. I think in class terms myself, as you proposed
on a different posting which I will deal with later. The ruling classes in
Argentina have turned the country into that kind of clown. In the meantime,
they have forcibly destroyed a good deal of our social tissues, and have
mercilessly reduced the working class to a ghost of itself, a working class
where the unemployed are more important than the employed. What they cannot do,
however, is to provide a solution to the essential human necessities of the
members of this (and other subject) class (es). So that, in the end, they have
no way out of the problem.
Now, the problem in fact lies in the clear perception by most members of that
working class that the starting point of the machine of human destruction lies
in the particular relation of Argentina to the world system. Argentineans do
NOT ignore that we have been recolonized. How could one, when one's own country
has achieved the unsurmountable feat of CREATING a new imperialism, namely
Spanish imperialism, out of scratch?
Political awareness and resistance are not unrelated to the terrorist tactics
employed by the oligarchs and the imperialists, tactics which include the
permanent drumming of many "leftists" on the "human rights" issue. They have
scared people, but they have not blunted our awareness. The problem lies in
discovering the way to make people realize that, since (as they already know)
things not only CAN be worse, they WILL be worse, and necessarily so, "there is
nothing to be lost but our chains".
On a recent posting you lectured me on the importance of having a good legal
environment (remember? on the Bush fraud issue). Now I feel I need to lecture
you on the importance of a state-terrorism environment.
At any rate, you have not answered the basic question I posed on my lengthy
mails, Mark. Please read them again. I know that they are a good piece of
political literature, by the way. Whether you agree with me or not, you will
enjoy a second reading.
Hugs,
>
Néstor Miguel Gorojovsky
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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