M-TH: Up Against the Wall, Althusser
In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Dave Bedggood <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes >Who would hang him Jim? You? In whose name? Why workers' militias of course, in the name of the revolutionary proletariat. Maybe you don't know the evidence. Althusser confesses that he killed Helene after she joined those who were criticising him for defending the Communist Party's betrayal of May 68. Earlier, Althusser had voted to have Helene's party membership suspended on wholly spurious grounds that she was a war-time collaborator. In fact she was a resistance heroine, whose militant politics were an anathema to a party that had become a bulwark of capitalist stability. -- Jim heartfield --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
Re: M-TH: Up Against the Wall, Althusser
The guy was nuts. If you invoke the name of the revolutionary proletariat to go round topping nutters youre not serious. What's happening in your part of the world that's real? dave. > In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Dave > Bedggood <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes > >Who would hang him Jim? You? In whose name? > > Why workers' militias of course, in the name of the revolutionary > proletariat. Maybe you don't know the evidence. Althusser confesses that > he killed Helene after she joined those who were criticising him for > defending the Communist Party's betrayal of May 68. Earlier, Althusser > had voted to have Helene's party membership suspended on wholly spurious > grounds that she was a war-time collaborator. In fact she was a > resistance heroine, whose militant politics were an anathema to a party > that had become a bulwark of capitalist stability. > > > -- > Jim heartfield > > > --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- > --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
Re: M-TH: UN moves into Sierra Leone
Chris writes >Empiricism is the idealism that comes from >restricting oneself to fragmentary empirical data. and then >Intervening in Sierra Leone will be extremely difficult but it is not >primarily being done for imperialist reasons. Nor was the intervention in >East Timor. > >Chris Burford > This is empiricism. By restricting your vision to the fragmentary evidence of 'peacekeeping' and selectively filtering imperialism to mean just 'financial gain' you miss the point of these wars and interventions. The nexus of imperialism is its rivalry. When imperialist states go to war with each other the eventual victor consolidates its position in terms of their lesser allies and the defeated. This arrangement will last up and till the rivalries re-emerge and take new forms- the defeated may rebuild their position, productivities do not remain static, former allies may come into conflict over who polices particular regions etc- and eventually the arrangement gets re-written as the rivalries spill over into war and a new victor emerges. To avoid this happening, or at least to postpone it as long as possible, the onus is on the victor to maintain their hegemony. The onus on the rivals is to both take part in AND challenge this hegemony. (There's a dialectic here Chris.) The concrete form of this hegemony today is the UN. Its role was, is and will remain so until the arrangement spirals into full-blown barbarism once more, to maintain Pax Americana: i.e. the US as world policeman and with the UK as its foamin' guard dog with a fond memory of the bones of Pax Britannica. That this role gets played out as self-trumpeted 'peacekeeping missions' should not fool anyone who can see beyond the fragments. Russell __ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: Colombia and Ireland
In Colombia a civil war exists. It is a civil war that that has nothing to do with the promotion of the class interests of the working class. The FARC and the ELN are the principal guerrilla armies claiming to represent the interests of the masses. But there is little or no difference between these movements and the forces of the state. Both are merely different expressions of the interests of the bourgeoisie and thereby serve different functions in perpetuating the existence of that class. The masses are merely pawns in the conflict between the different bourgeois political interests. The FARC and the ELN are petty bourgeois organisations that ultimately represent the interests of the bourgeoisie --analogous to the Provo IRA. Like the IRA they cannot and do not want to promote the class interests of the masses --however much they pretend otherwise. Like the IRA they are prepared to do a deal with the forces of the state in the interests of establishing a bourgeois settlement. The issue is the price at which they are prepared "to betray their principals" --as some might put it. The essential difference between FARC/ELN and the bourgeois political forces centred in and around the Colombian state is not the essential bourgeois class interests which each in its own way sustains. The difference is a more derivative, perhaps even more superficial, one. FARC/ELN express bourgeois interests in a way that is more accommodating to the petty bourgeois masses on which their support is based. Consequently a bourgeois settlement must be one that includes conditions that in some partial way satisfy the needs of the peasant masses. This compromise, like the Good Friday Agreement, must be dressed up in bright colours in order to deceive, confuse and diffuse the Colombian masses to render it more possible to foist compromise on them. The success in implementing such a compromise allows the leadership of FARC/ELN to establish itself within the institution of the state in such a way that it can preserve its petty bourgeois interests as an integral part of the state. This is what Sinn Fein/IRA in Ireland have been striving to achieve. They are hoping that their petty bourgeois interests are sustained within the structures of the British state in a Northern Ireland Assembly, the Northern Ireland Executive and other state and para-state bodies. Consequently the economic sustenance of Sinn Fein/IRA petty bourgeois interests will shift its support (through its existence as a armed organisation) from economic sources that may have been less than legitimate to more explicit economic support in the state. In this way it will have succeeded through compromise in shifting the economic source of its existence from outside the imperialist to inside it. In this way this petty bourgeois interest will have been successfully colonised by the state --by imperialism. The corporatist imperialist state will have further integrated interests that had existed outside it into its very imperialist statal being. In a previous period this same state largely colonised the British working class in a similar way --it cannibalises all that challenges it from the outside. Ultimately both Sinn Fein/IRA and FARC/ELN seek are more sophisticated and subtle capitalist state that appears to encompass the interests of a variety of different petty bourgeois elements while essentially and effectively serving the interests of the bourgeoisie. They thereby seek to restructure the capitalist state investing it with a colonising capacity --colonisation through a corporatist strategy. In short the struggle of Sinn Fein/IRA and FARC/ELN is a pro-imperialist struggle for the restructuring of the capitalist state. To suggest that these political elements are revolutionary from the point of view of the masses merely invests them with a revolutionary mystique which belies the essential political interests which they express.
M-TH: Keynes - Marx
In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Chris Burford <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes >And there is no unity between them? That is undialectical. Marx knew well >enough the need under bourgeois democracy to engage in the battle for >reforms. Indeed Wages Price and Profit (which goes under a different name >in the USA) is an argument reaffirming the importance of the working class >fighting for its share of surplus value (strictly that its exploitation >should not increase). True enough. But none of this supports your contention that there is a unity between Marx and Keynes. >This sounds like you are using Marx as a revered text for exegesis rather >than as a guide to action. Tell me Chris: In what way does Marx's critique of political economy serve you as a guide to action? >Capital is the private ownership of the means of production. It is a >relationship. It is not sacks of gold or bundles of notes. If those sacks >of gold and bundles of notes are managed in the interests of the working >people as a whole, they are abolished as capital. Capital is a social relationship which expresses itself as exchange value. So capital can be, among other things, sacks of gold and bundles of notes. Marx's most famous work, _Capital_, is devoted to explaining how exchange value cannot be managed in the interests of working people. The abolition of capital is also the abolition of the social relationship based on exchange value. -- Lew --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
Re: M-TH: Up Against the Wall, Althusser
At 09:00 25/10/99 +0100, you wrote: >In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Dave >Bedggood <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes >>Who would hang him Jim? You? In whose name? > >Why workers' militias of course, in the name of the revolutionary >proletariat. Maybe you don't know the evidence. Althusser confesses that >he killed Helene after she joined those who were criticising him for >defending the Communist Party's betrayal of May 68. Earlier, Althusser >had voted to have Helene's party membership suspended on wholly spurious >grounds that she was a war-time collaborator. What is your source? That is not how Althusser describes it in "The Future Lasts Forever" page 203. You really seem to have lost perspective or proportion. In fact she was a >resistance heroine, whose militant politics were an anathema to a party >that had become a bulwark of capitalist stability. > > >-- >Jim heartfield Chris Burford London --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
