Sartesian:
Tell me, are the bourgeoisie a progressive class? In Mexico in 1910? Were
they a progressive class in 1905? In the Spanish-American war of 1898?
What was positive and negative about the destruction of the the liberation
movement in the Philippines by Pershing? Are the positives separable from
the negatives? Absolutely not.
Reply:
'The bourgeoisie, historically, has played a most revolutionary part. The
bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all
feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations.'
The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels.
Sartesian:
Only by overthrowing the totality of the
CLASS POWER, of its organization of labor, can anything "positive" be
realized.
Reply:
Yes, but also only by harnessing the technological advances it has wrought,
the advances in the organisation of labor, through the collective
ownership of the means of production, can socialism enter history as an
advanced
economic and social system.
The alternative is to what? Smash the machines? Engage in a frenzy of
Luddite-like return to year-zero, ala Khmer Rouge?
Smashing class power is to smash existing property relations, which have
become a fetter on production rather than its motor.. It is clearly NOT to
dispense with the progress made under a mode of production which was an
advance on that which went before.
Finally, with your continued jibes about 'tailing Hamas' it is clear to me
that you are a fool. In Marxist terms the word is revisionist. Rather than
extrapolate your conclusion from an investigation of the facts, you instead
have applied your conclusion to that investigation beforehand, and
thereafter sought to build an argument in support thereof.
To clarify, I do not tail Hamas. I support Hamas, 100 percent, in its
resistance to settler colonialism, apartheid and ethnic cleansing - but even
more importantly, in its resistance to a gendarme of the common enemy of
humanity in our term, US imperialism. For you, it is clear, imperialism is
nothing more than an abstraction, a word completely shorn of meaning, much
less
an economic category. Your enemy is Hamas, mine happens to be imperialism.
Hamas are not a progressive entity in of themselves, but in their
resistance to the aforementioned, and in global and regional terms, they
certainly
play a progressive role.
The form of resistance changes, this is a product of specific historical
conditions previously gone over. The one absolute necessity (be careful now,
cause I may just about to get all Hegelian on your ass) is resistance.
Oppression tends to breed it, you know. Why is it an absolute necessity?
Because all that is rational carries within it the seeds of its own
irrationality, including Hamas, including the bourgeoisie, including
Capitalism -
including the Obama administration - including everything that exists in and
of
human society.
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