If Dave Bedgood wishes to circulate his criticism of the public statement
by left academics to a wide variety of other people also copied into his
post, that is his prerogative. But I do not see the need or the propriety
of disseminating this remark about myself even if it were more polite and
scientific in its criticism.
This is a collective mailing list, and the ground conventions should be
observed of not copying material outside it, and transgressions of that
need to be defensible. This is not.
At 21:31 23/04/99 +0000, you wrote:
>Burford still spreading his liberal left shit around the Marxism
>space as if thats all he's got to do.
Shit is a necessary process of daily bodily reproduction but it is not
clear how Dave thinks the battle for marxist, leninist, and trotskyist
ideas is enhanced by calling liberalism shit. It is a body of ideas
particularly associated with capitalism and it may have progressive and it
may have reactionary aspects.
Nor is it a proper way to criticise a body of noted left writers to a wide
circulation list, by associating their name with the weaknesses of a
possibly left liberal shit like myself. They too might wish to dissociate
themselves from me after all. It is hardly fair to convict them of guilt by
association just because Dave B sees an association of which they are
ignorant.
>exploding the cheap pacifist propaganda
>of Burford and his caste of left intellectuals who seek constantly to
>disempower the working class at home in the fight to stop their own
>bourgeoisies going to war.
It sounds to me as if Dave B is losing it in his frustration at not
mobilising more opinion against this war. This is because his line is wrong.
It would do more for peace, and to weaken imperialist control of the war,
to build a coalition on the basis that it is just to intervene to defend
the Kosovan right to self-determination, but the way this has been done is
inherently imperialist.
What is interesting theoretically, is that Dave Bedgood recognises, as I
do, that the essence of this appeal by left academics, accepts the power
reality of a Europe that is dominated by capital, by the European Union,
and the alliance with the USA. It accepts the criticism of Serb fascism as
being wholely incompatible with either liberal capitalism or any form of
socialism they would wish to support.
It makes some demand for reforms that try to oppose the war but in a way
that is realistic in terms of the actual balance of power. It suggests
greater involvement of the OSCE for example.
It is strange that Dave B calls this utopian when he has called for
unconditional military support for the KLA but without any idea of how to
get it there in such a way as it is sealed off from imperialist and
capitalist influences.
Now he writes:
>This appeal is no more than a dressed up defeat for Yugoslavia.
>This is what the liberal pacifists want. Because even they they are
>upset about NATO breaking the law and using bombs, they are more
>upset about Milosovic 'fascism'.
> It enforces imperialism's breakup of
>Yugoslavia in which nations could only formed around appeals to
>national purity, by mutual ethnic cleansing.
So the men and women of eastern Europe had no alternative and no power of
reasoning to decide what was in their better interests? Was "Stalinism" so
bad that everyone goes silly? More specifically, why have the Czechs and
the Slovaks not purified their cities and frontier districts following
their peaceful separation?
> The only
>way that the war in Yugoslavia can advance the interests of workers
>internationally is for Yugoslavia to win and imperialism to lose.
So Dave Bedgood no longer supports "unconditional" military solidarity with
the KLA?
I thought it sounded like the empty words of a small sect at the time.
Posted on marxism unmoderated March 20th:
>I post a short article from Class Struggle #26 (paper of the
>Communist Workers Group of New Zealand ) on this subject.
>MARXISTS call for self-determination for the Kosovan Albanians.
>Our military support should be unconditional.
Unconditional means unconditional??
Or is it just one of those bold words which if stated boldly enough will
enable people to recognise the correct developing international centre of
revolutionary leadership out of all the other developing international
centres of revolutionary leadership?
Chris Burford
London
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