Re: [Marxism] Zimbabwe elections
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. * Could it be that nationalism, tribalism, regionalism, nuclear family-ism, invidious distinction-ism, all these primitive associations, for now, continue in the main to trump socialism? And that instead of being an adjunct of socialism in its extension, this is seized and used against us by capital local and global . . . , until some powerful jolt to social relations is brought about that turns that towards universal, collective identity? We have experience that points in that direction: the failure of nationalism and national liberation movements to change our situation for the better, the failure of Euro-communism, social democracy and the ongoing failure of reformism generally, the failure of socialism in one country, also still being demonstrated, the failure of the notion that workers (no longer even "employees," but "associates" at big boxes, now "bankers" in finance, etc.) rise and fall with the fate of the corporation that exploits them, instead of organizing collectively across capital's contrived boundaries to extirpate the beast? So amidst gathering economic, social and environmental chaos "Trumpism" will soon fail, and then where to? I have this simple-minded drawing I once made, copy of somebody's cartoon. In the first panel it shows a bunch of people deep in a hole, with the caption, "Once upon a time, there was a bunch of people stuck in a hole." In the second panel, "Attempts were made by various individuals to get out of the hole, third panel, "such as arm flapping . . . fourth panel "jumping" . . . , fifth panel "meditation and levitation" . . . sixth panel "This went on for hundreds of years, until they had tried everything except helping each other out . . . The last panel shows people climbing on each other's shoulders and holding one person's foot in another's hands, with the caption, "So they helped each other out." Louis Proyect wrote On 8/9/18 11:55 AM, John Reimann via Marxism wrote: Why could it not have started in Zimbabwe? I think the answer is fairly obvious. ZANU-PF, like the ANC, like the MPLA in Angola, Frelimo in Mozambique, and like SWAPO in Namibia, were all national liberation movements with only a tangential relationship to socialism. When I was involved with Tecnica in the early 90s, I used to get reports from our volunteers working in all of these places about how unlike the FSLN they were. All of these volunteers had spent time in Nicaragua previously. I remember vividly how creeped out a volunteer who worked in Zimbabwe was by government officials. --- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus _ 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] Zimbabwe elections
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. * Fine article, just one disagreement: On 2018/08/09 05:55 PM, John Reimann via Marxism wrote ... socialism in one country is impossible. That even goes for an industrialized one, never mind one like Zimbabwe. After three decades of intense structural adjustment, poor Zimbabwe is nearly completely deindustrialized today. But in 1980 it had the third highest industry/GDP ratio in the world, behind only South Korea and Germany. Gory details of the subsequent demise: http://ccs.ukzn.ac.za/files/Bond%20Zimbabwe's%20Long%20Economic%20Crisis.pdf On 2018/08/09 06:46 PM, Louis Proyect via Marxism wrote: ... I am not sure what possibilities the metalworkers union has but it sounds like it might signal a rebirth of Marxism in South Africa. Let's cross our fingers. Here are some pros and cons, done about 18 months ago: https://www.pambazuka.org/democracy-governance/african-labour-and-social-militancy-marxist-framing-and-revolutionary-movement _ 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] Zimbabwe elections
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 8/9/18 11:55 AM, John Reimann via Marxism wrote: Why could it not have started in Zimbabwe? I think the answer is fairly obvious. ZANU-PF, like the ANC, like the MPLA in Angola, Frelimo in Mozambique, and like SWAPO in Namibia, were all national liberation movements with only a tangential relationship to socialism. When I was involved with Tecnica in the early 90s, I used to get reports from our volunteers working in all of these places about how unlike the FSLN they were. All of these volunteers had spent time in Nicaragua previously. I remember vividly how creeped out a volunteer who worked in Zimbabwe was by government officials. It could have been different if by some miracle the Communist Party in South Africa had not been such a sack of shit. At the time, we gave it the benefit of a doubt because it had moved in a Eurocommunist direction. The idea of being anti-Stalinist was commendable but now when it went along with pro-capitalism. I am not sure what possibilities the metalworkers union has but it sounds like it might signal a rebirth of Marxism in South Africa. Let's cross our fingers. _ 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] Zimbabwe elections
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. * Louis is, of course, right that socialism in one country is impossible. That even goes for an industrialized one, never mind one like Zimbabwe. I never meant to imply anything to the contrary in the article I wrote. But there's also the other aspect: A socialist revolution is almost inevitably not going to break out in a whole series of countries together; it's almost certainly going to start in one particular country. Why could it not have started in Zimbabwe? I think the article also points out the failures (if we want to call it that) that stemmed from both the guerrilla strategy of Mugabe as well as his capitalist/reformist perspectives and program. Maybe most important among them was the failure of land reform. Exactly due to his guerrilla strategy, Mugabe and ZANU were isolated from the working class, including the rural proletariat. This inevitably meant corruption, and that came into massive play in regard to land reform. In addition, what really would have made most sense given the large farms and their resultant economies of scale, would have been nationalization (under the control of the workers themselves). However, Mugabe could not take that path exactly because of his capitalist perspective. If you think that it was right not to have seen the colonial revolution in Zimbabwe as combining with a socialist revolution, then you also have to explain how things could have ended up differently as far as the regime that followed. I also think there is a natural link between failing to have a socialist perspective and failing to have a truly international one. True, Mugabe was linked with the Chinese regime and he probably had other connections. But there simply was not a perspective, program or strategy to link up organizationally with the South African revolution, for example. For one thing, had there been, it would have meant a bitter struggle against the S. A. Communist Party. Could they have won that political battle? Maybe not. But this simply shows the political failings of the colonial revolution in a whole series of countries. Socialists today should draw the lessons from that. John Reimann _ 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] Zimbabwe elections
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. * Comrades might be interested to read a statement on the present situation in Zimbabwe which has also been signed by a number of African socialist organizations: https://www.thecommunists.net/worldwide/africa-and-middle-east/stop-the-repression-in-zimbabwe/ I can not fail to point out that as far as I know the international organization of which David is a member has a somehow different approach: its leading member in Zimbabwe stood as a candidate on the list of the government party! To put it in parliamentary terms, this seems to me not to be a very socialist position! -- Revolutionär-Kommunistische Organisation BEFREIUNG (Österreichische Sektion der RCIT, www.thecommunists.net) www.rkob.net ak...@rkob.net Tel./SMS/WhatsApp/Telegram: +43-650-4068314 --- Diese E-Mail wurde von Avast Antivirus-Software auf Viren geprüft. https://www.avast.com/antivirus _ 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] Zimbabwe elections
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 8/8/18 9:27 PM, DW via Marxism wrote: > > Leaving that aside is if it's applied to Nicaragua, this means...what > > exactly? Not seizing power? Limiting, even against the wishes of the > rural > > masses and urban workers further nationalizations? What would be the > point > > then of the FSLN coming to power if only to topple the hated > dictatorship? > > In fact, the self-limitations imposed by the FSLN worked out well, huh? > > Plus, Louis, you make it out to seem as if nothing else was going on the > > region...like El Salvador, Guatemala, etc. I am not arguing had, as A. > > Sandino suggested..."only the workers and peasants can go all the way" > > ...that the results wouldn't of been any different. Though we never would > > know had they, the FSLN, lead the masses to just that, that an even > deeper > > radicalization would not have shifted the entirety of Central America > > working masses to consider socialist solutions. Revolutions happen when > > it's least expected, afterall. > Maybe it’s not worth responding to, but I found myself scratching my head and wondering what David is talking about here. Yeah no joke there was stuff going on in the rest of Central America. The Guatemalan revolution was busy having its head handed to it on a silver platter and that would not have changed irregardless of Sandinista policy. The FMLN certainly did not need revolutionary encouragement from the Sandinistas as they were for the most part very interested in going down a Socialist path, but alas they could only fight the largest military power in the planet to a bloody standstill. Guess they had not read their Trotsky, otherwise they would have prevailed? Or what exactly? And speaking of the rest of Central America, let us not forget that Honduras and Costa Rica were contra staging grounds. Yeah the balance of forces was so in favor of revolutionary upheaval that a slight nod from a more revolutionary leadership in Managua would have certainly resulted in a massive social explosion and the incorporation of the entire isthmus into a revolutionary project. Greg > > > _ 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] Zimbabwe elections
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 8/8/18 9:27 PM, DW via Marxism wrote: Leaving that aside is if it's applied to Nicaragua, this means...what exactly? Not seizing power? Limiting, even against the wishes of the rural masses and urban workers further nationalizations? What would be the point then of the FSLN coming to power if only to topple the hated dictatorship? In fact, the self-limitations imposed by the FSLN worked out well, huh? Plus, Louis, you make it out to seem as if nothing else was going on the region...like El Salvador, Guatemala, etc. I am not arguing had, as A. Sandino suggested..."only the workers and peasants can go all the way" ...that the results wouldn't of been any different. Though we never would know had they, the FSLN, lead the masses to just that, that an even deeper radicalization would not have shifted the entirety of Central America working masses to consider socialist solutions. Revolutions happen when it's least expected, afterall. David's revolutionary bombast is not worth responding to except as a cue to post another excerpt from my 15 year old article: In a very real sense, the gains of the Nicaraguan revolution were partially responsible for their undoing. The Agrarian Reform, in particular, caused traditional class relations in the countryside to fracture. Agricultural workers and poor campesinos no longer had to sell their labor at the cheapest price to the wealthy landowner. This, in turn, led to lower production of agricultural commodities. George Vickers pointed these contradictions out in an article in the June 1990 "NACLA Report on the Americas" entitled "A Spider's Web." He noted that the Agrarian Reform provided a reduction in rents, greater access to credit and improved prices for basic grains. This meant that small peasants had no economic pressure on them to do the backbreaking work of harvesting export crops on large farms. Even when wages increased on these large farms, the campesino avoided picking cotton on the large farms. Who could blame them? This meant that the 1980-1981 cotton harvest, which usually lasts from December through March, remained uncompleted until May. Each of the three subsequent coffee and cotton harvests suffered as well. The labor shortage became even more acute as the Contra war stepped up and rural workers were drafted into the Sandinista army. In addition, Nicaragua faced the same type of contradictions between town and countryside that existed in the Soviet Union in the 1920s. It was difficult to keep both urban proletariat and peasant satisfied due to conflicting class interests of each sector. While both classes fought to overthrow Czarism or Somoza, their interests tended to diverge after the revolution stabilized. In 1985, the Agrarian Reform distributed 235,000 acres of land to the peasantry. This represented about 75% of all the land distributed to peasants since 1980. The purpose of this land distribution was twofold. It served to undercut the appeal of the Contras to some campesinos, since land hunger would no longer act as an irritant against the government in Managua. Daniel Ortega would simultaneously give a peasant title to the land and a rifle to defend it in ceremonies in the countryside all through 1985. The second purpose of this land grant was to guarantee ample food delivery into the cities. This would allow the government to end food subsidies. The urban population had enjoyed a minimum of basic foodstuffs at highly subsidized prices. These price subsidies fueled budget deficits and, consequently, caused inflation. The hope of the Sandinistas was that increases from new farm production from the countryside would compensate for the ending of food subsidies. However, what did occur was a sharp convergence between the price of subsidized food and food for sale in the retail markets. A pound of beans at the subsidized price was 300 cordobas, while retail market prices reached 8,000 cordobas. The subsidized breadbasket became a fiction while marketplace food became the harsh reality. Managua housewives became outraged as hunger and malnutrition among the poorest city-dwellers grew rapidly. The underlying cause of the high price of food was the shortage of supply. Contra attacks on food- producers, large and small exacerbated the shortage. What was the solution to Nicaraguan hunger? Was the solution to shift to the left and attack the rural bourgeoisie? Should the Sandinistas have expropriated the cattle ranchers, cotton farmers and coffee plantations and turned the land into small farms for bean and corn production? This would have meant that foreign exchange would no
Re: [Marxism] Zimbabwe elections
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. * Well...Louis suggested "Well-meaning Trotskyist comrades who castigate the Sandinistas for not carrying out permanent revolution should remind themselves of the full dimensions of Trotsky's theory." Indeed...but it the theory didn't stop in 1907, now did it? Reading what Louis wrote it's as if Trotsky only designated his theory for Tsarist Russia. Indeed...when he wrote it. But after the debacle in China, and along with this Draft Criticism of the Communist International he and his movement applied universally. That is the "full dimensions of Trotsky's theory". Leaving that aside is if it's applied to Nicaragua, this means...what exactly? Not seizing power? Limiting, even against the wishes of the rural masses and urban workers further nationalizations? What would be the point then of the FSLN coming to power if only to topple the hated dictatorship? In fact, the self-limitations imposed by the FSLN worked out well, huh? Plus, Louis, you make it out to seem as if nothing else was going on the region...like El Salvador, Guatemala, etc. I am not arguing had, as A. Sandino suggested..."only the workers and peasants can go all the way" ...that the results wouldn't of been any different. Though we never would know had they, the FSLN, lead the masses to just that, that an even deeper radicalization would not have shifted the entirety of Central America working masses to consider socialist solutions. Revolutions happen when it's least expected, afterall. David Walters _ 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] Zimbabwe elections
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 8/8/18 5:32 PM, John Reimann via Marxism wrote: "From Nicaragua to Zimababwe, the road of capitalist development has been tried and tried again. It is not working." First off, it is Zimbabwe, not Zimababwe. Also, the possibility of either of these countries achieving "socialism" was zero. We need to get back to the earlier conception of socialism as a world system in order to understand the economic contradictions of a place like Nicaragua. This is from an article I wrote about 15 years ago answering the ISO: A decisive factor in the transition to socialism in Russia would be the outcome of socialist revolutions in Europe. The survival of a revolution in Russia was impossible without help from victories in the West. In a "Speech on the International Situation" delivered to the 1918 Congress of Soviets, Lenin said, "The complete victory of the socialist revolution in one country alone is inconceivable and demands the most active cooperation of at least several advanced countries, which do not include Russia." Lenin is clearly consistent with the analysis put forward by Marx and Engels regarding the German revolution in 1850. Revolutions can not survive on their own. They have to link up with an overall assault on bourgeois power by a working-class unified under a socialist banner across nations, if not continents. Trotsky's theory is a product of his study of the Russian class-struggle. He did not develop it as a general methodology for accomplishing bourgeois-democratic tasks in a semi-colonial or dependent country. He was instead seeking to address the needs of the class-struggle in Russia. In this respect, he was identical to Lenin. They were both revolutionaries who sought to establish socialism in Russia as rapidly as possible. Their difference centered on how closely connected socialist and bourgeois-democratic tasks would be at the outset. Lenin tended to approach things more from Plekhanov's "stagist" perspective, while Trotsky had a concept more similar to the one outlined by Marx and Engels in their comments on the German revolution. Trotsky sharpened his insights as a participant and leader of the uprising of 1905, which in many ways was a dress-rehearsal for the 1917 revolution. He wrote "Results and Prospects" to draw the lessons of 1905. Virtually alone among leading Russian socialists, he rejected the idea that workers holding state power would protect private property: "The political domination of the proletariat is incompatible with its economic enslavement. No matter under what political flag the proletariat has come to power, it is obliged to take the path of socialist policy. It would be the greatest utopianism to think that the proletariat, having been raised to political domination by the internal mechanism of a bourgeois revolution, can, even if it so desires, limit its mission to the creation of republican-democratic conditions for the social domination of the bourgeoisie." Does not this accurately describe the events following the Bolshevik revolution in October, 1917? The workers took the socialist path almost immediately. If this alone defined the shape of revolutions to come, then Trotsky would appear as a prophet of the first magnitude. Before leaping to this conclusion, we should consider Trotsky's entire argument. Not only would the workers adopt socialist policies once in power, their ability to maintain these policies depended on the class-struggle outside of Russia, not within it. He is emphatic: "But how far can the socialist policy of the working class be applied in the economic conditions of Russia? We can say one thing with certainty--that it will come up against obstacles much sooner than it will stumble over the technical backwardness of the country. Without the direct State support of the European proletariat the working class of Russia cannot remain in power and convert its temporary domination into a lasting socialistic dictatorship." While there is disagreement between Lenin and Trotsky on the exact character of the Russian revolution, there is none over the grim prospects for socialism in an isolated Russia. We must keep this uppermost in our mind when we consider the case of Nicaragua. Well-meaning Trotskyist comrades who castigate the Sandinistas for not carrying out permanent revolution should remind themselves of the full dimensions of Trotsky's theory. According to this theory, Russia was a beachhead for future socialist advances. If these advances did not occur, Russia would perish. Was Nicaragua a beachhead also? If socialism could not survive in a vast nation a
[Marxism] Zimbabwe elections
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 July 30, Zimbabwe held its first election in decades in which Robert Mugabe was not on the ballot. This event should cause socialists to look back at what happened in that country and learn some lessons "The main point, though, is that be it from China, the United States or any other imperialist country, the idea that foreign investment can solve the problems is a failure. That is exactly the road that the African National Congress walked down and that led it to its present state. "From Nicaragua to Zimababwe, the road of capitalist development has been tried and tried again. It is not working." read entire article here: https://oaklandsocialist.com/2018/08/08/zimbabwe-holds-elections/ -- *“In politics, abstract terms conceal treachery.” *from "The Black Jacobins" by C. L. R. James Check out:https:http://oaklandsocialist.com also on Facebook _ 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
