En relación a RE: [CrashList] Rogues and sovereignty I,
el 11 Feb 01, a las 1:52, Mark Jones dijo:
> 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.
We could not agree more. In fact, I think that I will try to translate to
English a recent essay (that we are now distributing as a leaflet among
Argentinean mid-rank cadres of the union movement) by my cde. Osvaldo Calello
which bears exactly on this issue. Why do you think, dear Mark, that we in the
Izquierda Nacional have remained in proud isolation, risking the event (which
resulted in grim truth) that we could have to traverse a long road of decades
as a small propaganda group, instead of joining Peronism? Because we like to be
small, because we hate grandeur? Not at all. Sometimes you have to pay a price
of decades for a correct political decission. We chose not to soothe
Argentinean workers in their option for a national bourgeois path for our
revolution, AND not to appeal to the most primitive elements in the class by
dragging them into a simpleton's schema of "bourgeois vs. proletarian"
economicism. We chose to dive deep into the history of our country, to discover
the main threads of revolution, and to painstakingly build up from their
current -understandable enough, by the way, given the record of what was known
as the Left in Argentina- level of consciousness to help them step ahead into
the full consciousness of their historic duty with themselves.
You can rest assured, dear Mark, that if we had chosen either of the paths
above, our life would have been easier, sweeter, smoother, softer, and
politically irrelevant or directly reactionary. So that, yes, we do agree on
this. The cornerstone of revolutionary politics in the Third World is summed up
in your lines. And yes, I agree 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.
Critical support is the watchword, IMHO. Strike together, march separately. And
wait. Don't anticipate the betrayal by the bourgeoisie, but anticipate it. Try
to generate the conditions for this betrayal to be more apparent and less
harmful. And keep waiting, keep watching the horizon.
There is a very good couple of lines by an Uruguayan poet, Alfredo Zitarrosa:
"no hay nada más sin apuro / que un pueblo haciendo su historia" (a roguish
translation would be "there is nothing less in a hurry / than a people doing
its own history"). This is, by the way, a very Platine observation, since -as a
refugee from Guatemala told our comrades once- "Argentineans and Uruguayans are
people of slow digestive processes: too much beef in their diet".
> 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.
Yes, I fully support the above. The experience of the Chinese Revolution,
though very specific in its own way, is at the same time a source of lessons
for anyone trying to get to power outside the core. Perhaps to your rage, Mark,
I would also suggest that entire blocks of Trotsky are -sometimes even as an
anticipation of Mao's experience- equally apt to this task. And, of course,
Lenin, always Lenin.
>
> 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.
They belong to the Realm of Death. If the future is theirs, then there is no
future. Let us always keep in mind, at any time, Marx's phrases on the
domination of the World of the Living by the World of the Dead.
Dead labor rules over living labor, and the ideas of the dead generations
"oppress as a nightmare the brain of the living ones". If we don't prevail,
Death will reign unchallenged for ever.
We could not agree most, dear Mark. Happy to realize it still once again,
though a little bit bored ;-)
Hugs,
Néstor Miguel Gorojovsky
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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