On 8/20/06, Jim Devine <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Yoshie wrote: >In the United States, it is Marxists, more often than
the religious, who risk ending up becoming liberation theologians
without any base communities, so to speak. Almost all religious
activists on the Left I know -- Christian, Muslim, Sikh, whatever* --
are active through their own congregations of faith and often
ecumenically networked with religious activists of other faiths as
well as irreligious activists. In contrast, many Marxists I know tend
to be loose cannons, with no institution that they can call their home
base. <
me again: of course all the activists you know are active!
What I mean is that religious activists are active in and through
their own congregation, denomination, etc. and have bases of social
and political action. Not so with rootless Marxists in the USA -- we
have no mass Marxist institution comparable to the Presbyterian Church
USA that binds as as Marxists and gives us local, national, and
international bases of social and political action.
I was
making a _materialist_ point about the importance of the world-view's
social context: what's important is the connection to movements. And,
as suggested by what followed in my missive, what kind of movement
they're attached to is important, very important.
There clearly are mass organizations and movements based on Islam in
the Middle East -- Hizballah and Hamas being two most prominent
examples of them. I can't think of any secular Marxist organization
or movement in the Middle East of equivalent stature.
Yoshie: >Looking back on the history of state socialism, I'd have to
say that the way socialist states have organized civil society
institutions can be called "corporatist," ** much like the way the
Islamic state of Iran has. Under formerly and actually existing
socialist societies, trade unions, women's organizations, ethnic
organizations, etc. have never been autonomous. *** I believe that
neither Marxism nor any variety of religion should become the official
philosophy of a state. <
me: this is not new. The style of organization that "state socialism"
creates depends not only on the intentions of the ruling party or
parties but also the social conditions under which they operate. For
example, in the Russian revolution, the grass-roots soviets had a very
hard time surviving as independent institutions because of the civil
war, imperialist invasions, and a economic melt-down. As a second
example, it's hard for Cuba to be anything but "corporatist" – since
U.S.-led imperialism won't allow democracy.
Yes, but any time any movement tries to expropriate a large part of
the foreign and domestic ruling class assets, it will always face
capital flight, brain drains, civil wars, imperialist invasions,
covert actions, etc. So, if such conditions inevitably give rise to
corporatism, then, corporatism may be the short-term destiny of any
social revolution. The question is if the revolution can overcome its
short-term destiny once it consolidates itself, having overcome civil
wars, etc., notwithstanding being still threatened by the
multinational empire.
Anyway, this misses my point: I was saying that the socialist or
progressive character of a _religions_ government depends on the
degree to which women's, workers', ethnic minorities', etc.
organizations are independent of the state. I wasn't saying that a
Marxist-led government was automatically good or that a religious-led
government was automatically bad. (However, I do think that Marxism is
a better guide to practice than is religion. A lot of the good stuff
in liberation theology came from Marxism or from encountering similar
social conditions.)
A lot of good stuff in Marxism, some say, comes from religion,
mediated by left-Hegelianism. So, I'd say influences have been
mutual.
>* Jewish leftists appear to me to be an exception here: they tend to
be atheists or at least agnostics, and they tend not to participate in
even secular Jewish community activities. Perhaps, that is because
most Jewish leftists are either anti-Zionist or non-Zionist whereas
most major Jewish institutions, religious or secular, are dominated by
Zionists. <
most of the Jewish activists I know are involved in a secular Jewish
organization (Sholem) that's pretty anti-Zionist, though not
officially.
That's pretty unusual. Mike Friedman, on the Marxism listserv,
humorously referred to himself as a "piss-poor" Jew. That seems to me
to be the norm. Most Jewish leftists don't seem to gravitate toward
religious or secular ethnic Jewish organizations. That has an impact
on the public perception of Jewish political opinion, which tends to
be misunderstood and seen as far to the right of what it is, due to
the propaganda promulgated by the major Jewish organizations' leaders,
none of whom is a leftist.
--
Yoshie
<http://montages.blogspot.com/>
<http://mrzine.org>
<http://monthlyreview.org/>
