Giving enemies a name is a sinister business, I agree. It is akin to
witchcraft, but then economics IS witchcraft. But sometimes it is
no more than pulling a bearskin off a
shaman and revealing a poor trembling actor inside
(I do not mean Doug of course).
A hundred years ago, bitter battles were fought between those who claimed
the
mantle of Marxist leadership (Kautsky, Bernstein etc) and those who from the
margins of the movement (Luxemburg, Lenin) bitterly denounced them as
impostors, bourgeois politicians and above all, "revisionists", whose
purpose was to deny the possibility of capitalist crisis and the reality of
proletarian revolution, and to deliver the working class bound hand and foot
to its mortal enemies. The same thing is going on now, not just here
but al over the place. It is part of a pre-revolutionary ferment.
Today the person we should mostly be attacking politically is
Ralph Nader. For him to consolidate his leadership of the US
Greens would not be a good thing. It will mark the full
assimilation of the Greens, as has happened now in Germany.
This will split the anti-capitalist movement even more, and
it is already split about everything except the need to come
together for specific issues/events/struggles. Our anticapitalist
movement extends from the nationalist far-right to the sectarian
ultraleft and takes in EF! along the way. The ambition
of our enemies is to fragment this movement so
completely that it will no longer even be able to find unity in action
and will become what it was, a fissiparous, quarelsome morass
of hundreds of groups, special interests etc who have no shared view,
interest or strategy. They way to do this is to strip out the dominant
core, or centre of gravity of this burgeoning movement, by
reconsolidating its centre around an authoritarian figure
who actually does not speak to the real activists, and whose
ideology albeit confused is rootedly petit-bourgeois: the ideology of
a disaffected shopkeeper. Nader's role is what it always was:
to prevent a real radicalisation of the broader masses
outside the activists fringe.
However, nothing can slow the ascent of Nader to national political
prominence as a 3rd party leader; it is he who will be the political
beneficiary of Seattle/DC etc and the movement which has sprung up and
breathes in his sails. The contradictoriness and shallowness of his own
thought makes him the perfect choice; he is a template cut from the
contradictions, doubts and political illiteracy of the masses themselves.It
is necessary to support his candidacy while exposing ruthlessly, the
rottenness of his politics.
That, to judge from what I have seen on lbo-talk, is more or less the
position taken by Doug, who will vote for him 'without illusions' (I
stand to be corrected if I misunderstood).
But Doug Henwood takes a correct position in an
overly fastidious, Pilate-kind of way. We must not be vestal virgins. This
is a great opportunity for Henwood himself to find supporters and go forward
to seek high office. He is in tune with the movement and au fait
with its MO and many of its leading figures; and many respect him.
He is perfectly capable by nature, disposition, natural
charm and connections, of being a credible aspirant for high office. Of
course,
Henwood has no such ambitions, and his politics is too lacking in necessary
clarity. In order to form a bloc or position within the emergent radical
right-green-left movement, you have to have an absolutely clear theoretical
position of your own. This is 1902 stuff; before uniting, you must divide.
You can make your own checklist of points, and it practically writes itself,
on gender and identity politics issues, on ecology, on supranational
instances of power, on centre/periphery relations, on our characterisation
of late capitalism holistically, systemically, and above all on our view of
the nature of capitalist crisis. How real are items like global warming, N-S
divisions, water, oil, GE etc etc? Not as ethico-political quandaries or
flags marking ways thru a moral maze, but as *indicators of crisis*, and how
weakly or strongly determinant of crisis are they, what degree of hysteresis
do they embody? You have work thru these items, systematically, one by one,
with a clear programmatic intent. And this programme must never be cast in
stone, never be a mosaic fetish-object 'owned' by some sectarian
leadership, it must always be the subject of debate, dispute, rejection,
clarification, development, re-adoption etc, in light of real analysis of
concrete events and actualities, above all in light of best available
science. What is the real science of GE, of global warming, of
fossil-depletion, etc? You have to base yourself on science.
I think that in the context of *struggle for a movement*, that is to say,
of a struggle to participate in shaping a broad social movement (which may
possibly emerge under certain circusmtances as a true revolutionary
movement), it is quite possible to settle all theoretical differences as
between say Louis Proyect, Doug Henwood and myself. If I lived in NY and
knew Henwood personally I would urge him all the time, day and night, to use
his powerful position and to take on a role of *political leadership* for
which he is well suited. I would urge him to play a leading role in the
planning of events and to run for office. And this process would be the
context in which one could try to reach conclusions on outstanding
theoretical issues, however contingent, unstable and shortlived such
conclusions might be in practice. That is always the way it is, anyway.
Movements which boil up from the social depths like A16, Seattle
etc, always and inevitably revitalise the politics of a whole class as well
as reinvigorating its enemies, always ignite new struggles and above all,
awlays produce new parties, new programs and new LEADERS. The question of
leadership is profoundly important and it is because I think of Henwood's
suitability that, as a matter of fact, I press him about it and
why I keep on mentioning it as a possibility.
Mark Jones
Mark Jones
http://www.egroups.com/group/CrashList
----- Original Message -----
From: "Michael Perelman" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Friday, June 30, 2000 10:10 PM
Subject: [PEN-L:21072] Re: RE: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: [Fwd: Position in
theWorld-System and National Emissions of]
> Mark, please, stop characterizing others. I suspect that if you wrote in
more
> temporate terms, Doug would probably agree with much that you say. You
know
> that he loves to play the devil's advocate. Now, I am characterizing him.
>
> Mark Jones wrote:
>
> > Doug Henwood wrote:
> > >
> >
> > > I think there's lots of oil left; the tighter constraint is that
> > > burning all we have may well choke us. Maybe I'm wrong, but I think
> > > the odds suck in betting against human ingenuity, even under
> > > capitalism, at devising new energy sources. I think profit
> > > imperatives have severely slowed research into them. But they'll
> > > probably arrive.
> > >
> >
> > This is interesting; it's the first time Doug has shown his n-c colours
so
> > clearly.
> >
> > Mark
>
> --
>
> Michael Perelman
> Economics Department
> California State University
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Chico, CA 95929
> 530-898-5321
> fax 530-898-5901
>
>
