Re: [Marxism] "49 armed factions in Syria" was: Syria rebels, activists denounce IS attack on Paris - Yahoo News

[Lüko Willms via Marxism]

  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.
*

on Sonntag, 15. November 2015 at 03:32, Louis Proyect via Marxism wrote:

> Forty-nine armed factions in Syria,

 That's the most interesting part on this message. 

 In the beginning there were peaceful mass demonstrations, then came the "Free 
Syrian Army", and now they are at least 50 armed factions trying to impose 
their power on the whole Syrian nation. 

 As I said before, in a real popular revolution, you see a concentration and 
centralisation of political forces around one revolutionary leadership, but the 
Syrian "revolution" has gone the opposite path: more and more splintering in a 
myriad of interfighting armed factions. 

 For me, this says that there is no revolution, but the opposite. 

 And out of this rather counter-revolutionary fragmentation come those most 
reacionary groups like those behind the bombings in Beirut and the shootings in 
Paris. 


Cheers, 
Lüko Willms
Frankfurt/Main, Germany
http://www.mlwerke.de 


PS: resent because it did not reach the mailing list 
_
Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm
Set your options at: 
http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com

Re: [Marxism] "49 armed factions in Syria" was: Syria rebels, activists denounce IS attack on Paris - Yahoo News

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

  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.
*

On 11/15/15 4:56 PM, Lüko Willms wrote:

*ary democracy,

*No, that is wrong. Engels even took great pains to explain to the
German movement that the concrete democratic rights are indispensable,
first and foremost the freedom of the presse, the freedom of assembly
and the freedom of association, while parliamentary elections, even
common and secret and equal elections are mostly a trap. I think that I
mentioned not long ago this article, a veiled polemic against the
Lassaleans in the article "The Prussian Military Question and the German
Workers' Party", in english in the MIA at

Re: [Marxism] "49 armed factions in Syria" was: Syria rebels, activists denounce IS attack on Paris - Yahoo News

[Lüko Willms via Marxism]

  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.
*

on Sonntag, 15. November 2015 at 18:15, Louis Proyect via Marxism wrote:

> There are still many people in Syria who have politics that are 
> revolutionary even if they don't quote Karl Marx.

 Also in Germany, Poland, the USA etc. And also here is no revolution taking 
place. 

 And if it were, there would be a unifying trend around one revolutionary 
leadership. Independent of any label you might want to attach to that 
leadership. 

 As said, in Syria the opposite development began in 2011, and is still 
continuing: an increasing fragmentation, a deepening splintering of the 
"opposition" into -- according to your message -- at least 50 factions, 51 if 
we include the country's government. Probably much more. And each of them is 
the result of some "leadership" group forming a separate armed faction in order 
to exercise power over the people by their separate sectarian leadership 
clique. 

 That is not revolution, that is the destruction of any chance for revolution. 
A revolution in Syria would have to chase all those armed cliques away in the 
first place. 

>  Marx and Lenin fought for democratic rights 

 sure, they were revolutionists. Lenins leadership is one such example of the 
unifying process of a real popular revolution, which was the opposite of what 
is happening in Syria right now. 

> and even for the replacement of dictatorial rule by parliamentary democracy, 

 No, that is wrong. Engels even took great pains to explain to the German 
movement that the concrete democratic rights are indispensable, first and 
foremost the freedom of the presse, the freedom of assembly and the freedom of 
association, while parliamentary elections, even common and secret and equal 
elections are mostly a trap. I think that I mentioned not long ago this 
article, a veiled polemic against the Lassaleans in the article "The Prussian 
Military Question and the German Workers' Party", in english in the MIA at 
>  If the government decreed universal direct suffrage, it would from
> the outset hedge it about with so many ifs and buts that it would in
> fact not be universal direct suffrage at all any more.
>
> And regarding universal direct suffrage itself, one has only to go
> to France to realise what tame elections it can give rise to, if one
> has only a large and ignorant rural population, a well-organised
> bureaucracy, a well-regimented press, associations sufficiently kept
> down by the police and no political meetings at all. How many
> workers' representatives does universal direct suffrage send to the
> French chamber, then? And yet the French proletariat has the
> advantage over the German of far greater concentration and longer
> experience of struggle and organisation.

 I also don't know of any place where Marx or Engels or Lenin talked about 
"dictatorial rule" as something to be replaced, and be it only a parliamentary 
democracy. 

 No, no, our comrades were very clear: we fight for material democratic rights, 
for the workers to take power out of the hands of the bourgeoisie.

 Lenin explained in a polemic against "Parabellum" (pseudonym of Karl Radek), 
written in or before October 1915 titled "The Revolutionary Proletariat and the 
Right of Nations to Self-Determination", to be found in an english translation 
in MIA at
>  From what Parabellum says, it appears that, in the name of the
> socialist revolution, he scornfully rejects a consistently
> revolutionary programme in the sphere of democracy. He is wrong to
> do so. The proletariat cannot be victorious except through
> democracy, i.e., by giving full effect to democracy and by linking
> with each step of its struggle democratic demands formulated in the
> most resolute terms. 
>
> It is absurd to contrapose the socialist
> revolution and the revolutionary struggle against capitalism to a
> single problem of democracy, in this case, the national question. 
> 
> We must combine the revolutionary struggle against capitalism with a
> revolutionary programme and tactics on all democratic demands: a
> republic, a militia, the popular election of officials, equal rights
> for women, the self-determination of nations, etc. 
> 
> While capitalism exists, these demands — all of them — can only 
> be accomplished as an exception, and even then 
> in an incomplete and distorted form. Basing ourselves 
> on the democracy already achieved, and exposing its
> incompleteness under capitalism, we 

Re: [Marxism] "49 armed factions in Syria" was: Syria rebels, activists denounce IS attack on Paris - Yahoo News

[Joseph Green via Marxism]

  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.
*

Luko Willms distinguishes between "concrete democratic rights" and universal 
suffrage, and insists that Engels makes the same distinction. This is an 
important issue, and I will show below that he is turning Engels on his head.

Luko Willms wrote:

 >  No, that is wrong. Engels even took great pains to explain to the German 
>movement that the concrete democratic rights are indispensable, first and 
>foremost the freedom of the presse, the freedom of assembly and the freedom 
>of association, while parliamentary elections, even common and secret and 
>equal elections are mostly a trap. I think that I mentioned not long ago 
>this article, a veiled polemic against the Lassaleans in the article "The 
>Prussian Military Question and the German Workers' Party", in english in the 
>MIA at 
> >   For example:
> 
> >{Engels]  If the government decreed universal direct suffrage, it would from
> > the outset hedge it about with so many ifs and buts that it would in
> > fact not be universal direct suffrage at all any more.

But Willms takes the argument out of context. Engels is talking about a 
particular situation: 1860s Germany. Let's look into this.

 Engels distinguishes what might type of elections might be conceded by the 
bureaucratic-absolutist government of Bismarck representing "the feudal 
aristocracy and the bureaucracy" and elections under different conditions. In 
Germany in the 1860s, there was still the question of whether there would be 
a democratic revolution. Engels analyzes the concrete situation of that time, 
and distinguishes the type transformation Bismark aimed at in order to stave 
off revolution, and the type transformation that would be of most use for the 
masses.

When one reads the entire article, one sees that Engels is fervently in favor 
of universal suffrage; it is absurd to say that Engels distinguished between 
concrete democratic rights, which were important, and universal suffrage, 
which was supposedly mainly a trap. If one wanted to condense and simplify  
Engels' argument, it would be that universal suffrage can be a trap and an 
empty facade *if* there aren't other democratic rights,  but is extremely 
important when there are these other rights. This is exactly opposite to how 
Luko Willms understands him.

Also, one will see that Engels was not afraid to champion the overthrow of 
bureaucratic-absolutist rule in favor of a democratic government, even in the 
situation that this government was bound to be a bourgeois government. That 
is relevant to various of the democratic movements today. 

In the 1860s, the Bismarckian system of government could only have been 
overthrown if the bourgeois strata had supported this. The working class was 
faced with what its attitude to this should be. Engels calls the general 
democratic movement "the bourgeois movement", to indicate the distinction 
from the socialist movement and because democracy in Germany at that time 
would put the bourgeoisie into power, but he knew full well that not only 
capitalists were in that movement.

The concrete circumstances facing the masses has changed since the 1860s. The 
class situation is more complicated. But the general principles put forward 
by Engels - of the distinction between the democratic and socialist movement, 
of the need for the proletariat to participate in the democratic struggle, 
and the need of the proletariat to have its own independent standpoint during 
this struggle - remain valid.

Now for the quotes:

Engels writes, as if to repudiate Luko Willms in advance, "...the bourgeoisie 
and workers can only exercise real, organised, political power through 
parliamentary representation; and such parliamentary representation is 
valueless unless it has a voice and a share  in making decisions, in other 
words, unless it holds the 'purse-strings'. That however is precisely what 
Bismarck on his own admission is trying to prevent. We ask: is it in the 
interests of the workers that this parliament should be robbed of all power, 
this parliament which they themselves hope to enter by winning universal 
direct suffrage and in which they hope one day to form the majority? Is it in 
their interests to set all the wheels of agitation in motion in order to 
enter an assembly whose words ultimately carry no weight? Surely not."

So much for Engels' supposed denigration of the value of universal suffrage 
and parliamentary representation. 

 Luko Willms cites the following passage, but doesn't consider that Engels 
isn't referring to a French republic, but to the repressive Second Empire of 
Louis Bonaparte 

Re: [Marxism] "49 armed factions in Syria" was: Syria rebels, activists denounce IS attack on Paris - Yahoo News

[Lüko Willms via Marxism]

  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.
*

on Sonntag, 15. November 2015 at 03:32, Louis Proyect via Marxism wrote:

> Forty-nine armed factions in Syria,

  That's the most interesting part on this message. 

  In the beginning there were peaceful mass demonstrations, then came the "Free 
Syrian Army", and now they are at least 50 armed factions trying to impose 
their power on the whole Syrian nation. 

  As I said before, in a real popular revolution, you see a concentration and 
centralisation of political forces around one revolutionary leadership, but the 
Syrian "revolution" has gone the opposite path: more and more splintering in a 
myriad of interfighting armed factions. 

  For me, this says that there is no revolution, but the opposite. 

  And out of this rather counter-revolutionary fragmentation come those most 
reacionary groups like those behind the bombings in Beirut and the shootings in 
Paris. 

 
Cheers, 
Lüko Willms
Frankfurt/Main, Germany
http://www.mlwerke.de
_
Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm
Set your options at: 
http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com

Re: [Marxism] "49 armed factions in Syria" was: Syria rebels, activists denounce IS attack on Paris - Yahoo News

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

  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.
*

On 11/15/15 11:51 AM, Lüko Willms wrote:


  For me, this says that there is no revolution, but the opposite.


You have made this mistake before. The schisms in Syria have a lot to do 
with a crisis on the left in general, particularly in the Middle East 
with the collapse of the USSR. Under Baathism, the CP became part of the 
political establishment thus discrediting the image of socialism even 
though it was Stalinism that the average Syrian had encountered. 
Furthermore, Syria lacked a civil society. If a student became an 
opponent of Baathism, he or she could be tortured, imprisoned or killed. 
So this meant that an independent left had little chance of getting 
started. Furthermore, this meant that oppositional politics tended to 
gravitate to the Sunni mosques that like Black churches in the south 
could function as organizing centers. It also meant that the Muslim 
Brotherhood could become a pole of attraction for anti-Baathist 
dissidents until it was smashed in 1982 at Hama. Robert Fisk said that 
the Syrian army killed 20,000 people there in less than a month to give 
you an idea of the savagery of the Syrian government.


But the biggest problem of all was Assad's turning the conflict into a 
sectarian one from the very start. He calculated correctly that it would 
sucker a large part of the liberal left, including a lot of people who 
mistakenly view themselves as revolutionaries, into taking his side as a 
symbol of pluralism, tolerance and all the other bullshit.


There are still many people in Syria who have politics that are 
revolutionary even if they don't quote Karl Marx. Marx and Lenin fought 
for democratic rights and even for the replacement of dictatorial rule 
by parliamentary democracy, despite capitalist property relations 
remaining. The admiration for Assad by so many on the left in defiance 
of what the founders of our movement believed is a stain on socialism 
that is almost too deep to remove at this point.

_
Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm
Set your options at: 
http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com