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Ah, it's a petty man who begrudges the generosity of others, isn't it Dr.
Barrera?
But to the substance, little of that that there is, of M. Barrera's post:
First, Mr. Barrera has trouble with the use of the word mediation, stating
'Artesian says this mediation (the national question, I am pretty sure,
but, to be honest, it is sometimes hard to know with this guy, that's what
is meant by mediation) is ultimately an obstacle in the struggle for the
emancipation of labor..'Well, since I like the word mediation, I wish I
could take credit for introducing it into the discussion JB and I were
having, but I can't. JB introduced it stating:
My view is that EVEN THOUGH in the last analysis class (or socio-economic
relations) are behind
this, it is MEDIATED by and EXPRESSED through what I call national
questions.
Now a mediation is a form for the expression of the real content, the actual
determinants of a
social relation, but the mediation expresses that determinant through
obscuring, veiling the relation itself.
At the same time however, as the mediation , obscures the fundamental
social relation that gives it its own existence,
its materiality, the mediation becomes its own immanent critique
revealing the truth of the social relation itself.
I'm sorry if this language seems unduly difficult or obtuse to anyone,
perhaps an example will help.
For example, the wage form mediates the dispossession of the laborer from
the products of the total working day; the wage form mediates the
estrangement of labor from the conditions of labor, the products of labor,
and the time of labor by appearing as compensation paid to the worker for
the entire working day. In fact, the mediation is compensation only for
part of the day, hiding within itself the expropriation of unpaid labor, and
yet reproducing on an ever larger scale the results of that expropriation.
If I'm still confusing people, I suggest reading, and closely Marx's draft
of his proposed chapter 6 of Capital, entitled Results of the Direct
Production Process where Marx says, among many other things:
With this, the superficial appearance of a simple relation between
commodity owners fades away. This constant sale and purchase of labour
capacity, and the constant confrontation between the worker and the
commodity produced by the worker himself, as buyer of his labour capacity
and as constant capital, appears only as the form mediating his subjugation
to capital, the subjugation of living labour as a mere means to the
preservation and increase of the objective labour which has achieved an
independent position vis-à-vis it. This perpetuation of the relation of
capital as buyer and the worker as seller of labour is a form of mediation
which is immanent in this mode of production; but it is a form which is only
distinct in a formal sense from other, more direct, forms of the enslavement
of labour and property in labour on the part of the owner of the conditions
of production. It glosses over as a mere money relation the real transaction
and the perpetual dependence, which is constantly renewed through this
mediation of sale and purchase.
Anyway that, hopefully, gives the flavor of mediation, and the limits to
mediation... and why a mediation becomes the obstacle to be overcome.
In real life, in the non-blowing of smoke life, where real nationalism has
functioned as a mediation... we can see this parallel process in... well, in
the history of the Mexican Revolution 1910-1940, where the apparent
emancipatory nationalism of a Carranza, or an Obregon, or Calles was
actually not all that emancipatory; reconstituting the hacendados;
maintaining the exploitation of the rural poor, the indigenous peoples, the
people of the pueblo. We can see even the confiscatory nationalism of
Cardenas failing to break the exploitation and oppression of the rural and
urban poor, and leading to the tighter tethering of the US economy as WW2
approached.
In real life, we can see the nationalism of the MNR in Bolivia 1952-1964,
turning against the miners, and paving the way for its own overthrow and the
regime of Barrientos-- no slouch himself when it came to acting the
nationalist, the indigeno; we can see it even in the popular unity national
independent socialism of Allende, who, on the day of his own overthrow
actually takes to the airwaves to urge the workers to not take to the
streets, to not combat the military, to trust in the constitution.
In fact, while Mr. Barrera may not know of it, may not like it, in all these
cases of nationalism, the nationalists have actually stood up for their
national bourgeoisie and against the interests of the workers.
And in doing so, they have also stood up for the interests of the
international bourgeoisie.
