(A note sent this morning to /Socialist Register /comrades about Leo's
influence here.)
-------- Forwarded Message --------
*Subject: *
Re: Sad, Brutal News
*Date: *
Sun, 20 Dec 2020 10:58:00 +0200
*From: *
Patrick Bond <[email protected]>
Ah, Greg and Sam, and everyone within this amazing family,
As far away as Johannesburg - literally halfway across the earth from
Toronto - the shock waves reverberate and the tears flow. The news is so
terribly distressing for everyone who ever came across a comrade who
could draw upon such a bottomless well of the socialist ethos:
generosity of spirit, clarity of vision, mastery of political history,
eloquence of expression, and builder of community. What a gap this
leaves in the world's indy left, for us all to try to fill - and if we
do so even partly in the tough period ahead, it will be thanks to our
ability to dwell on infinite warm memories of Leo, with such power.
Here in South Africa, his influence was always a delight and salve,
starting around 1992 when - always with Sam amplifying at the right
moment, and John Saul having earlier tilled the radical soil, too - Leo
visited, providing those/tour de force/,
ruthless-critiques-of-everything he had mastered. We were desperate to
understand the perils of leading labour strategists' tragic adoption of
competitiveness within world capitalism, of the unions' rightward drift
and then corporatist slide, of African nationalism's and social
democracy's limits, of radical social movement potentials, and of the
retreat of so many ex-left intellectuals underway here, too. No one
could provide these with the force, depth, scope and ironic chuckle that
Leo did. That year in /SR, /he and Ralph Miliband charted a broader
course that from right early on, I found
<https://omalley.nelsonmandela.org/omalley/index.php/site/q/03lv02424/04lv02730/05lv03005/06lv03006/07lv03084/08lv03086.htm>
to be of lasting relevance for the class and social struggles that lay
ahead here:
"An approach distant both from ultra-leftism on the one hand and
from the politics of accommodation of social democracy on the other
will need to be elaborated and developed, given clear and relevant,
short-term and longer-term policy meaning and institutional focus.
This approach entails an involvement in immediate struggles over a
multitude of current issues: in the current moment of economic
crisis the most important must be bold programmes for economic
recovery which are oriented to employing people directly in the
expansion and improvement of the public infrastructure [and in South
Africa's case, basic needs goods]... While no such programme will
allow one country to escape by itself from the economic crisis, this
programme could mitigate the effects of the crisis, and lay the
basis for a more ecologically sound, socially just, productive
economy in the future. It would contribute, moreover, to giving
people a sense that something can be done about the crisis, which is
the key to further popular mobilisation in even more radical
directions."
Honestly, that advice stayed with me and many others ever since. Indeed
over the years Leo also helped to interpret and deconstruct not only our
intellectual and labour traditions, but South Africa's capital-C
Communist legacy, for example shaping socialist praxis with the young
rebel reds Vishwas Satgar and Langa Zita during their 1998 visit to
Toronto (from p.66 here
<https://copac.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/New-Frontiers-for-Socialism-Booklet.pdf>).
And the founder of the Alternative Information and Development Centre in
Cape Town, Brian Ashley, just rang me a few minutes ago to contemplate
Leo's just-as-powerful influence with a different set of comrades whose
political roots were revolutionary and often Trotskyist. A leading South
African marxist-feminist who did her PhD at York Politics, Melanie
Samson, often recounts how she drew so much from his seminars about our
local debates, too. Those are only a few examples. From all sides: full
respect.
During their last trip to Joburg about five years ago, Leo and Sam had
not lost a step. They drove home their points not only at academic
meetings - here's <https://youtu.be/YLivGcIDkcw?t=340> a great lecture
Vishwas and Michelle Williams hosted through their /SR-/style Democratic
Marxism series - but in crucial sites of strategic confrontation,
especially a most extraordinary session at the largest union's
headquarters building in March 2016, with hundreds present, in what
might well have been the most sophisticated yet passionate political
debate those metalworker leaders have ever witnessed. Dating to the
early 1990s, Leo and Sam always helped that crucial union
<https://www.numsa.org.za/article/numsa-general-secretary-presentation-unifor/>
and everyone knew they could review working-class strengths and
weaknesses with such profound wisdom. But Leo also knew Leninism so
well, and ran rings around some of the ersatz-vanguardist versions he
had to confront that day - even growing red-faced with fury at times,
since so much was at stake (sigh, it didn't end well in subsequent years
and his warnings were so prescient in retrospect). During that visit,
Leo and I negotiated a studio discussion about neoliberalism for
listeners of the main national radio station's morning show, for a full
20 minutes; it was absolutely hilarious, probing with friendly barbs the
country's deepest divides, using the international comparisons we
urgently needed then, as President Zuma's anti-imperial talk-left
walk-right dancing was at its clumsiest.
And over the past decade or so, Leo helped my Rio-based ally Ana and I
to continually enrich the application of Brazil's subimperialism theory
- in a book about the BRICS he contributed to in 2015 (from p.61 here
<https://d1wqtxts1xzle7.cloudfront.net/52726203/Patrick_Bond__Ana_Garcia-BRICS__An_Anti-Capitalist_Critique-Pluto_Press_2015.pdf?1492731649=&response-content-disposition=inline%3B+filename%3DPatrick_Bond_Ana_Garcia_BRICS_An_Anti_Ca.pdf&Expires=1608454911&Signature=D9p-tVfKPWrG2Ig9Q8f~r4yO0cbwmLBmvvS9yXc-0TdKgZqbwbnK95SQX6LxeSoOag~yIKoTS3NSHaqE5tbpSbnIPwuqMeGZwYAvSrEInSArhAPyrkR0JZhOSX3vq1lEmOcPmIV7A9cIlhCF3mHW-w9o2jqS1kJwDRV4ega--OkGz0r~bkGFCCz6RDCc0ehjljIochE2-CFkdJ6OqzcDfSSOAZ--s5cfKqoryB1px-lcrYfSH6W4GDV0ChfAj0CLUPhCVmE-2SJUo3gROAoxMAIs8o1XSG92p6KghXQLhW7or3vUB1TItx-47pkDEa5zFilxtf9-R485w2CcjYHpLA__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAJLOHF5GGSLRBV4ZA#page=78>),
at 2016 Beit Zatoun
<https://youtu.be/aEaJoNhQhPY?list=PLhiXBRrj94PcJYDfXAp1FrDp--Nmc-1cn&t=12>
and York workshops, and later in /SR/. And we won't ever forget how even
with the nuanced differences, Leo's own view of imperialism's capacity
to assimilate G20 elites for Washington-dominated multilateralism's
sake, shaped us inexorably. Even when disagreeing, he invariably raised
our confidence to keep working on an appropriate semi-peripheral Int'l
Poli Econ. And in hotter disputes - ... um, like, "crisis? what crisis?!
<https://www.redpepper.org.uk/no-better-model/>" in the Empire seminar -
it was the greatest fun to test lines of argument with a comrade so
sharp, funny, tireless and forgiving.
I wrote Leo emails on several dozen occasions over the years, asking for
advice; never was I disappointed. He hosted me in 2003-04 in my first
sabbatical. His and other /SR /comrades' exceptional networks,
wide-ranging commitments and ability to craft the /SR /alongside Colin
and Greg left me breathless with gratitude on countless cold Sunday
mornings during annual November editorial meetings in a SOAS seminar
room. Making links between comrades always pleased Leo so much, and so
many of us were beneficiaries. I can't thank Leo and the Toronto
comrades enough, for the hospitality and the permanent sense that thanks
largely to Leo's institution-building power, York Politics has been our
lefty Mecca literally for decades. Melanie and Leo were so gracious
letting me stay in such a warm, welcoming house on occasion, a place so
well known to the world's lefty visitors.
Also, I'm certain that with many other comrades in Cape Town (especially
AIDC and Univ of Western Cape) and Joburg (Univs of Witwatersrand and
Johannesburg) who have had long, fruitful interactions with Leo, we will
be joining up within the first half of next year to pay tribute to our
finest internationalist scholar-activist role model - and dear friend.
We'll keep you posted and if this second Covid wave passes in time,
we'll organise some physical event to remember his contributions here at
a fitting site of intellectual struggle like a socialist institute hall,
and certainly try to stream or record it.
Hamba kahle - travel well - comrade Leo Panitch. Long live your spirit
in us all, long live.
Patrick
On 12/20/2020 6:50 AM, Greg Albo wrote:
Dear Friends, Colleagues, Comrades, SR Collective,
the news is awful, and I am having difficulty accepting it. I don't
believe it is possible, even if we said good-bye 10 days ago. But here
is the note that Sam sent out to many of us, including some here, this
evening. I can't say more. We all are bleeding. Greg
Dearest friends/comrades,
Leo passed away this evening. Some five weeks ago he was hospitalized
and diagnosed with multiple myeloma. While in the hospital he
contracted Covid-19 and this developed into viral pneumonia. The
pneumonia made it near impossible for him to breathe and he spent his
last hours in palliative care resting peaceably.
The shock of Leo no longer being with us is impossible to fathom. He
was a life force, a ubiquitous presence in private life, social life,
intellectually and in socialist politics. In this moment, his absence
just can't be processed. Later the time will come to organize a
celebration of his life.
Less than a week ago, before his health began its accelerated decline,
Leo read /Red Plenty /referring to it as ‘one of best intellectual as
well as literary experiences of my life’. In the last email I received
from him he sent this passage from the book:
‘What has come over me? Thought Sasha. He remembered a joke. What is a
question mark? An exclamation mark in middle age. Maybe that was all
this was, just his arrival at a time of life when the muscles of
certainty begin to go slack and doubt naturally replaces vigour. Just
the first delivery of the universal skepticism of old men. But then
why did he find himself so much angrier than before?’
Identifying with these sentiments was vintage Leo. His ‘muscles of
certainty’ were never in fact especially taut but as he grew older,
there were more reasons for skepticism about our collective future.
Yet Leo was constitutionally incapable of giving up. If he perpetually
raised doubts to us about our ability to transform the world – as he
did to the very end - it was because he was looking to us to convince
him, and ourselves, otherwise. And whatever those doubts he found
himself ‘so much angrier than before’ about the state of the world and
so much more determined to carry on the struggle.
Leo will remain a presence in our lives; as one friend said, the
intensity of the pain is the flip side of the depth and intensity of
what he brought to us. But his absence is at the same time a painful
loss of friendship and creative energy.
Leo’s death is of course most difficult for Melanie and their children
Maxim and Vida. Melanie has deeply appreciated the many moving and
loving notes she has received, though it is obviously difficult to
respond to each of them right now or to deal with phone calls.
Best to all of you. We will be in touch again soon.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group.
View/Reply Online (#4638): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/4638
Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/79101467/21656
-=-=-
POSTING RULES & NOTES
#1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
#2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived.
#3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern.
-=-=-
Group Owner: [email protected]
Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/8674936/1316126222/xyzzy
[[email protected]]
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
