Nestor:
> 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
They are indeed important and I'm wondering if you can't organise these and other
postings of yours into one (or better, several) essays to go on the website.
Incidentally there are other CrashListers whose articles ought to go on the Website,
it would be invidious to mention names so I'll immediately do so: Tom, Julien, Seth,
Jorge, Henry, Jim, Jose, Charles, Lou, Tahir, Rob, Steve and many others including
some like Pat and Stan already archived there. Now that the message archives are
running into dozens of megabytes there is some point in making the best of the best
more visible and I'd be glad if people would not show bourgeois false modesty but
simply send me your most precious political jewels for the sake of posterity, if
there is one.
Nestor, I did read your postings carefully and I think most of the issues between us
probably are questions of point of view -- there are few substantive differences,
just slightly different perspectives. Of course, every national proletariat, every
people in fact, has the right to defend itself by all and every means against the
horrors of neocolonialism, globalism and imperial predation generally, and of course
we shoud try to make "our own" state apparatus serve that role. And of course we
should be alive to the ways in which "our own" leaders can be compromised,
criminalised, assassinated or otherwise rendered harmless by imperialism. The people
who own and operate the USA are simply criminal gangs themselves, inhuman,
planet-busting, life-eating criminals who give no quarter and must expect none. The
point -- my whole point in fact -- is only this: the revolutionary party and the
workers' movement must be, and be seen to have, real political and social autonomy,
and cannot be the political or psychological prisoner of a national bourgeoisie
which has managed to wrape itself in the national flag.
I'd like to suggest that we look at striking examples from history to see how
revolutionary movements find ways to work with their "own" national bourgeoisie or
comprador elites, while still preserving their own autonomy and while still
preparing to seize state power. A good example is the complex relationship which
developed between the Chinese Communist Party and the Kuomintang in the 1930s and
1940s. There are people here like Henry Liu and Steve Philion who know a great deal
about that. We need to think about the meaning of 'antagonistic' and
'non-antagonistic' contradictions and how revolutionary movements can use these
ideas and methods to structure their relationships with allies from different social
classes and even their allies in the national elites and ruling classes, even highly
reactionary, comprador elites who are completely treacherous and even genocidal, but
whose own contradicitons with imperialism can still be exploited.
Nestor is right to point to the rising tides of class struggle in Latin America and
many other places. Of course it is true that, either the future is ours, or there is
no future. The future cannot be theirs.
Mark
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