Artesian wrote: "You say that the relationship between armed and mass struggle requires serious consideration. Indeed it does. Consideration more serious than simple praise, defense, of the actions of a sect "that opposes class-conscious mass actions."
I am most certainly reading your postings on this topic. You apparently are not reading mine. Nowhere have I ever offered simple praise for the Naxalites or anybody else for that matter. I asked Rajesh if they are criminals. I will ask you the same thing. "What is the content of that confrontation? Self-style vanguards, wearing Chairman Mao buttons marching in the streets with AK 47s and red books?" Again I have no idea whose postings you are reading because they are certainly not mine. I discussed the evidence of growing political polarization and the fraying of vaunted consensus that gave American capitalism such tremendous political stability. People screaming "kill him" and carrying assault rifles outside public appearances by the president are not "thinly veiled threats." The display of raw right wing hatred this summer is an indication of a deepening political polarization fully capable of developing into violent confrontation. The people I witnessed in screaming fights with the tea baggers were definitely not from any nano vanguard. "As for what the American people would or would not stand for, I think your assessment is rather superficial, shallow, and precisely because you base it on some allegiance, imagined or real, that you think you, or Marxists, might or might not share with the "American people" about Constitutional provisions and "social contracts." The observation that there is a distinctive political culture heavily influenced by such things as Enlightenment notions of democratic rights and a social contract is neither superficial or shallow. American history does indeed form the objective conditions that radicals must either ignore or engage with. Who said anything about an "allegiance" to the US Constitution" Marxists must share? The revolutionary struggle in this country will indeed be closely involved in the struggle to protect democratic rights or it will remain confined to online posturing and very small groups with very long names. I do not share your pessimism that a military coup or the suspension of the Bill of Rights would elicit nothing in the way of mass resistance. "There is no Soviet Union to prop up a Mao, an NLF etc." I don't have the figures on the tonnage of logistical support flowing from the Soviet Union to China but it is a safe bet that the vast majority of their aid went to the Guomindang because of the military alliance period extending from 1930's through the end of WWII. That the Chinese Communist party emerged victorious in that struggle does indicate to me that it is possible to have a mass, rural, peasant based movement that is class conscious precisely because of their invovlemet an armed struggle to contest state power. This is no guarantee of anybody else being to do this, of course, and I would advise against traveling in those areas of India currently targeted by the government in order to do your own investigation. It would also be wise to base your analysis of the Naxalite movement on more than a couple of posts from one Marxmail subscriber and a superficial/shallow comparison to Sendero Luminoso. ________________________________________________ YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: [email protected] Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
