On 10/8/06, Louis Proyect <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Yoshie:
>Were leftists supposed to oppose accepting Vietnamese immigrants, just
>because they were leaving a socialist country rather than a capitalist
>one, or to just shut up and pretend not to have noticed them?
But these people were about more than this. The Vietnamese "boat
people" were used as a cudgel against Vietnam in the same way as
Cuban boat people were used against Cuba.
Yes, but I'd think that not all left Viet Nam because it was
socialist. Probably many left because it was poor, certainly a lot
poorer than France, or they were scared of socialism because of
anticommunist propaganda. Some of them were, to be sure, hard-line
anticommunists who played brutal roles during the Vietnam War and
their families, but not all fit into that category. This just is a
difficult problem for which no satisfactory position existed but about
which being silent would have been also thought revealing.
With respect to Foucault, there is nothing "radical" about him at
this point. His hatred for Marxism had led him to give lectures on
Hayek and Mises who he saw as kindred spirits in the battle against
Marxism. There was still enough of a contrarian in him to become a
partisan of Khomeini, the cleric who presided over the slaughter of
Iranian Marxism. He had his cake and could eat it too. By attaching
himself to the Shia cause, he could 'epater le bourgeoisie' while at
the same time relish in the destruction of his sworn ideological enemies.
With regard to ideas of non- or anti-Marxists, as well as those of
Marxists, one takes what one can take and leaves the rest alone.
For people who want to read what he had to say, go to:
http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/007863.html
It contains the observation: "One thing must be clear. By 'Islamic
government,' nobody in Iran means a political regime in which the
clerics would have a role of supervision or control."
I guess his background in the French CP made him proficient in
bullshit apologetics...
That remark was published in Le Nouvel Observateur on 16-22 October
1978. Did you know by that date about Khomeini's doctrine of the
Jurisprudent (Velayat-e Faqih)?
Khomeini himself, before the 1970s, was traditional, both in his
thoughts on theology and political economy, according to Ervand
Abrahamian ("Khomeini: Fundamentalist or Populist?" New Left Review
I.186, March-April 1991, p. 109). He didn't invent the notion of
Velayat-e Faqih till he became radicalized in the 1970s, and even then
few knew of it.
--
Yoshie
<http://montages.blogspot.com/>
<http://mrzine.org>
<http://monthlyreview.org/>
