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Oh, sorry, some fish jumped nearby and I inadvertently pressed the
wrong key. Here goes Mr. K´s quotation:
"I'm from Argentina, I don't live there at the moment, but I did for
most of my life. I will of course explain nothing about why I'm
here in the US, because it has nothing to do with objective reality,
although in Nestor's 'nationalist left' ideology, this is enough to
dismiss anything I contribute as "bombastic liberal chatter"
Leonardo presents no proof of this false assertion. It is exactly the
other way round. In fact, we Argentineans know lots about exiles and
unwilling expatriations, even without leaving our own country. Ever
since what now is known as Argentina began to take shape, some of our
best radicals, patriotic and revolutionary, have had to live either in
exile or in what we call here "domestic exile". Even General San
Martín or General Belgrano. Even our great Jacobins Mariano Moreno
(who was exiled into Hades by a British navy captain during a trip to
Europe) or José Artigas. The greatest national bourgeois thinkers of
20th Century Argentina lived in "inner exile" or had to quit the
country during the worst moments of counter-revolution: Arturo
Jauretche and Raúl Scalabrini Ortiz. Jorge Enea Spilimbergo, one of
the greatest minds in the Left (no inverted commas) of my country, was
always declared a nonperson by the system of celebrity making that
dominates so fully the intellectual realm in Argentina (and, I had to
painfully admit this, even by some of his own comrades who thought him
too Leftist for what Argentina could stand).
Exile and expatriation define nothing in Argentina. That is because
the imperialist system of thought blocks most avenues to truly
revolutionary thinkers or politicians. The greatest of all Argentinean
socialists in the old shape, Manuel Ugarte, had to do most of his
living outside Argentina. I harbor no ill feelings, save a reasonable
amount of envy, for those fellow countrypeople who have managed to eke
out a living outside my country. What I really worry about, however,
is the contents of their mental luggage. Nobody has asked L.K. any
personal issue. I here declare that I envy him and his current
position in the US of America, not here.
But I can also say, however, that most Arg expats are at the same time
Arg sepoys, not because they are expats, but because they are sepoys.
And it is easier for a sepoy to leave the home country than for people
who are not. I would never qualify L.K. as a sepoy because he lives in
the US of America. But I can qualify him as a sepoy leftist from what
I see he writes. And also from the friends he makes in his current
home.
As to the reasons why I "extrapolate", etc., I would like someone to
make it sure that L.K. is informed that not only I "can reply" to him
but that I do that _where it really matters, which is DEFINITELY NOT
on this list_. We in the Izquierda Nacional not only have replied to
sepoy leftists where we must do it, that is in Argentina proper, but
also have exposed them "con amore" as what they really amount to in
Argentinean politics. So deeply we have done it that now, many of them
begin to approach us.
Sometimes, due to the sleazy nature of our petty bourgeois "leftism",
and in order to gain popular support, they stole the ideas of the
Izquierda Nacional, presented themselves as "peronists" and spoke
toads, snakes and worms of us. Which act of misery only helped to
bring tragedy to my own country because they accepted bourgeois
leadership while -in facts and whisper- bringing thousands of young
Argentineans to what we serious socialists used to call terrorist
action before imperialists changed the sense of the phrase. This,
simply because if you are Peronist you must abide by the general rule
of the bourgeois leader, never challenge the ideological base of the
"movement", and thus when you want to do socialist politics you can
only clash with that leader.
These miseries we tend to look upon with Lordly contempt, which
infuriates them. Which can be seen on this list in L.K., again.
But let us step ahead in the mucky terrain where we are walking. L.K.
further writes that I accuse "anyone who doesn’t buy [my] bullshit of
murderer, anti-patriot, etc." which is a sorry lie.
To begin with, I am amazed to see that L.K. considers an insult to be
branded anti-patriot. His best tradition roots directly in the founder
of Arg Socialism such as it came to be, Dr. Juan Bautista Justo. As
such, he should take it as a badge of honor to be
anti-Argentinean-patriotic, since the Arg left has always been such.
Since they consider that Arg capitalism is the same thing as, say,
French capitalism, then they are anti patriotic and think they are
doing the right thing (as, for example, a French socialist would have
done by opposing the campaigns of Saint Cyr officers in Argelia,
Rwanda, Yugoslavia or Indochina). This anti-Argentinean did not
prevent them, particularly Drs. Juan B. Justo and Repetto, to
sheepishly admire imperialist, particularly British, achievements in a
form of imperial patriotism which of course had many points in contact
with the existential condition of the middle classes in the
agroexporting Argentina of the early years of the 20th Century. In
this sense, the other branch of Argentinean socialism, the Communist
party, only shifted sheepishness from Western Imperialism to Eastern
Stalinism. But their conception of the character and nature of
Argentina was, of course, the same. It was a capitalist country.
Period. Such as adamantly explains us L.K.
Anyway, in the same manner that our worst right-wing military thugs
had been drilled in an idea of Argentina where you could "love the
country, but not the countrypeople", many in our Arg Left considered
(in a subdued way, of course) that this is a wonderful place to live
in, were it not for the "cabecitas negras". This took the form of a
cult to Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, a complex, murderous and at the
same time wonderful, politician of the 19th Century, on which cult the
"Leftist" form of "oligarchic patriotism", (that is a feeling of pride
to belong to the agroexporting formation built by the toil of European
labour and intelligence) was built. In a sense, L.K. might (and I say
MIGHT, I am not confirming anything but just guessing) belong to this
tradition (which would make him older than I thought, because the new
generations don´t share this mithology, or simply a strange item in
the new generations). That may be why he is uncomfortable with my
position according to which under his "Leftist" robes there exists a
full sized sepoy.
As to the final line in L.K.'s contribution, addressed to waistline, I
can´t but dialectically agree AND disagree.
L.K., in a fully Aristotelian mood, writes patronizingly that "in
Argentina, capitalism is fully developed and to
have hopes for “radical Keynesianism” is to be counterrevolutionary".
To begin with, I harbor no religious hopes in "Keynesianism" of any
kind. But (which of course will make L.K. shout triumphally "see, see,
what was I telling you") although the current Arg government isn´t
even "radically Keynesian", although it is not even "fully Keynesian",
and even though sometimes the alliances by this government include
some of the most unsavory tipes and political currents in Argentina
(parts of the "Left" included as well as parts of the oligarchic
establishment), although all of this (and lots more which I spare the
list members) is true, it is my political convicition that in this
precise moment; any serious socialist should be supporting it against
the antinational camp, which is deploying a full attack from the
right, the center and the Left.
Second: of course that in an abstract sense "in Argentina, capitalism
is fully developed". Chocolate por la noticia ("chocolate for the
news"), as we say here when some obvious banality is expressed as a
Great Truth. But what do we mean by that? The banal obvious thing that
market relations are widespread and have fully encompassed every
corner of human life? That there is no "Arg feudalism" against which
an "Arg bourgeoisie" has to struggle? In fact -BTW as against what a
very good deal of Arg "Leftists" argued for long decades in the 20th
Century- all these were facts of economic and political life in
Argentina, or in what was to become the core of Argentina, the soon to
be born "Pampa region", as far back as -at the very least- the first
third of the 18th Century.
However, the possession of a skeleton qualifies you as a vertebrate,
not as a mammal. The fact that the Argentinean social formation is, in
fact, "capitalist", does not mean that the historic tasks reserved to
the bourgeoisie (L.K.´s kind of "Leftism" doesn´t take into account
such trifle things as the Communist Manifesto and its definition of
the historic role of capitalism and bourgeoisies- have been
completed). They are far from completion. And they are far from
completion because the Arg ruling classes (which are not a
"bourgeoisie" in the sense of the Manifesto, that is in the sense that
the ruling class in the US of America is a national bourgeoisie, for
example) can´t take them to full completion. Capitalism can be
understood globally, or you don´t understand it. In the case of the
Arg ruling classes, as in every country outside the imperialist core,
the full deployment of the historical tasks of the bourgeoisie (in the
sense of the Manifesto) is thwarted by the ways these classes are
integrated in the global capitalist economy.
Which however, and here lies the difference between stale and rancid
ultraleftism and creative Marxism, does not make bourgeois tasks less
important or necessary in those countries where they have not been
fulfilled. During a whole period of brutalization of "Leftist"
thought, a "theory of stages" suggested (sometimes by quite unhappy
methods, BTW) that socialists outside the core countries should give
away any serious organizing so they would allow the "bourgeois stage"
to come to its happy ending. The results of this have been widely
known, and won´t return to them. A reaction to this sad and grim
suggestion was that the idea that in fact the "bourgeois stage" was
equally ended in Ouagadougou, in Tokyo, in Beijing or in Stockholm.
The results are still deployed.
In countries such as Argentina, the result is simply that he "Left"
denounces not just the bourgeoisie (a mythical bourgeoisie, by the
way, where petty scoundrels like any little shop owner are equated to
Nelson Rockefeller) but -and this is the serious thing- the absolutely
rational (and radical, and revolutionary) will of the masses of the
country to take to completion the bourgeois tasks. Which, first and
foremost, imply national liberation from imperialism and, in the case
of Argentina, the re-unification of South America as a first step
towards that of Latin America as a whole. This will, as explained by a
Lev Davidovich Bronstein, forces the revolution into a "socialist"
stage in a process that he suggested to define as "permanent
revolution". But permanent revolution, in Trotsky´s mind, did BY NO
MEANS imply that the socialists should wage a war against the local
national bourgeois movements in alliance with the local
representations of imperialist power.
When such "Leftists" explain that "Argentina is fully capitalist",
what they say is, in fact, that socialists must struggle, first and
foremost, against "the bourgeoisie", because this bourgeoisie is fully
welded to imperialist interest and, in fact, is the very
representative of imperialism in the country. Evidence against this
silly word of faith is absolutely disregarded, of course. The fact
that nobody did more to strangle the Argentinean march towards the
completion of bourgeois revolution after 1976 was NOT the bourgeoisie
but imperialism and the oligarchy is hidden by those foolish and
senseless generalizations (which remind one of the basic tenet of
bourgeois economists, according to which market relations and
capitalism are one and the same thing) the only purpose of which is,
however, to take sides with imperialism against the people of the
country you live in. It is an OBJECTIVE purpose, I am not saying that
"Leftists" understand this. It is precisely to impede them this
understanding that "sepoy Leftism" exists. It is not personal. It is
social and political.
And, politically and socially, for example, when an Argentinean
government puts an end to the dictatorship of monetarists in the
Central Bank, and places a left wing Keynesian "developmentist" there,
a gesture that has put the whole proimperialist bloc against it, these
"Leftists" warn the workers not to fall prey of "bourgeois" illusions,
to remain isolated of the whole of the society, and to leave the
government in isolation too. So that it will fall down, not to the
benefit of the "Leftists", but of the actual truth hidden in their
musings, the historic truth that they have served, once again,
imperialist interest by detaching masses of the middle classes from
the national front exactly when they were most necessary.
This is what is happening in Argentina today. This is all the truth
behind the bombast of this "Left" with the foreign debt issue.
This is what Kosloff means in Argentina.
Bye
--
Néstor Gorojovsky
El texto principal de este correo puede no ser de mi autoría
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