Yoshie wrote:
>Folks who speak of "socialism from below" (in reaction against the CP
>tradition, democratic centralism, etc.) aren't among Second Internationalists.
Right. The social democracy of the 2nd International emphasizes the role of
parliamentary representatives, party functionaries, and intellectuals as
substitutes for the grass-roots movement. They practice socialism from
above. Like the "CP tradition," Stalinism, "Marxism-Leninism," etc. they
build the party, not the movement, though they differ on other important
issues. (A cynic once defined "Stalinism" as third-world social democracy.)
Louis writes:
>>I support Peron against Anglo-American imperialism. This is common Marxist
>>practice. I learned this in the Trotskyist movement. I can refer you to
>>some of the literature, specifically Trotsky's defense of Haile Selassie
>>against Mussolini as an extreme example. For that matter, the Comintern
>>supported the Kuomintang in the early 1920s. The difference between Trotsky
>>and Stalin was over whether the CP should have retained a separate
>>identity, with its own newspaper, etc. The debate was not over whether the
>>KMT should have been backed in a fight for national independence.
Yoshie responds:
>Isn't it "stagist" to support left nationalisms, unless left nationalisms
>are thought of as ends in themselves? Left nationalisms must be "stages"
>(from which the masses can move forward) for socialists who support them.
It's "stagist" to see bourgeois nationalists such as Peron as substitutes
for a working-class movement. That doesn't mean that I'm saying a
Proletarian Movement can immediately take power thus "skipping stages,"
however. That movement is usually too weak. What it does say is that the
socialists should struggle to maintain their independence from the
nationalists while perhaps supporting those nationalists as a lesser evil
-- and to use that political and organizational independence to deepen and
strengthen working-class power (and the power of other dominated forces).
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
