M-TH: Our Mainstream
Rob, you are absolutely right. American lefties are further from our mainstream than lefties in Australia, Ireland, or Britain. This makes it all the worse when Ted Grant tendencies or DSA types come floating our way trying to apply their understandings to what is admittedly a bad situation. The practical effect is to reinforce the direction of our own worst leftie types, who are sitting usually in their safe havens of San Francisco or New York, Boston or Chicago. What exists in the US is a vast outback containing 90-100,000,000 people+, where these lefties never go and never engage. These southern regions are where capital fled post 1950s to avoid having to listen to the sterile leftism of these types. And this region has been producing its own "intellectuals" ever since.people like Wiliam Buckley (family from Misssissippi), H. Ross Perot (Dallas), the Bush family (West Texas and Houston), and Clinton/ Gore/ Carter etc. Since the US Left has zero Left presence here (except for the Catholic Church), they are poorly equipted to deal with reality, and turn to apparently more successful elements from other continents! This just confuses things more. An example in point, my favorite list (as Rob knows) is currently discussing whether Liberation Theology still exists! Many on this list seem to think that LT has almost totally evaporated off the face of the planet. If they were living in Texas as I do, they would quickly see that the only liberal/ Left activity in a town or city comes out of the Catholic Church. So while others are enmeshed in Kosovo or East Timor, the practical question down this way, is how to build a movement where the largest component of activists are nuns?! What's even worse, these nuns and priests are the most active people working nationally for building an antiwar movement in the US, or ending the death penalty! Thanks again, Rob, for inviting me to participate in Thaxis. But what an unfortunate name this is, to attract more plebian types to talk. It sounds like some sort of disease. Tony Abdo --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
Re: M-TH: Our Mainstream
G'day Tony, I'm no Catholic, but it seems to me even the Pope has realised - rather late in the piece - that his vicious anti-leftism (especially in Latin America) and uncritical pro-Reaganism has produced a cruel and godless Mammon every bit as inimical to him as that fanciful red dawn. Anyway, the ol' bloke looks bound for the pearly gates now, and while much depends on his successor, the sad ol' fella's recent tirades may have served to put some lead back in LT pencils. And I agree with what I take to be your point. Where the local left-humanism is predominantly Catholic, there be the station where our train must start its journey. Lefties tend to focus on where they're heading (and we tend to fight each other about the menu of destinations quite a lot), but aren't always too discerning about their very specific point of departure. Maybe it's a crass example, but I reckon Che had his theory half right when he went off so pathetically to die. The half that he got wrong was thinking a rudimentary assessment of local class relations was enough to get the locals reaching for their musketry. New ideas are fine (well, fundamental), but they only make sense to the locals in the context of the ideas they already have - that's what culminates in a transformational practice - and it is that practice which develops the idea beyond the limits of the initially thinkable. I reckon the bringer of the new ideas then finds his/her ideas have developed quite a bit, too, btw. So while others are enmeshed in Kosovo or East Timor, the practical question down this way, is how to build a movement where the largest component of activists are nuns?! What's even worse, these nuns and priests are the most active people working nationally for building an antiwar movement in the US, or ending the death penalty! Well, on those two issues at least, it's not too complicated - as editors tell rooky journalists everywhere - 'go with what you've got'! A movement can start out as a religious one and transform into something more rounded and practical. A few nuns and a granny still warm in her box is at least somewhere to start! Look at what had happened in Nicaragua before Paul'n'Ronnie put the fear of God and a few rounds into 'em! Trouble is, it goes the other way, too. International Women's day (but a week away, incidentally) started out as an explicitly socialist event (central to the Russian Revolution, too), and has now been expropriated by another brand of feminist altogether - one unfortunately better versed in Helena Rubenstein than Clara Zetkin. And one who is happily contenting herself with aspiring to an equal share of the alienation and exploitation 'won' by men half a millenium ago. Even here, I reckon, we should support her - but whispering in her ear all the while ... Thanks again, Rob, for inviting me to participate in Thaxis. Thanks for coming! But what an unfortunate name this is, to attract more plebian types to talk. We have lots of plebians, Tony! But yeah, they're being eerily quiet of late ... It sounds like some sort of disease. I kinda like it. But if the more gifted marketers present (not that one expects too many of them in these parts ... ) think we should change the brandname, let's do it! Nite all, Rob. --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: Re: Our Mainstream
An example in point, my favorite list (as Rob knows) is currently discussing whether Liberation Theology still exists! Many on this list seem to think that LT has almost totally evaporated off the face of the planet. If they were living in Texas as I do, they would quickly see that the only liberal/ Left activity in a town or city comes out of the Catholic Church. Well, a former high-school student of mine spent a year in California, and there the only alternatives she could see for young people were drugs and Church. After a close shave with drugs she got her company at the church. But there are workers and unions everywhere. So while others are enmeshed in Kosovo or East Timor, the practical question down this way, is how to build a movement where the largest component of activists are nuns?! What's even worse, these nuns and priests are the most active people working nationally for building an antiwar movement in the US, or ending the death penalty! James Connolly, the Irish Marxist revolutionary, has lots of good stuff on this problem of doing socialist work with Catholics. Thanks again, Rob, for inviting me to participate in Thaxis. But what an unfortunate name this is, to attract more plebian types to talk. It sounds like some sort of disease. A rose by any other name would smell as sweet. Anyway, given the appalling state of other so-called Marxist so-called discussion lists I don't much care what the name is as long as the discussion is free and hard, and you don't have to suck up to people like the two Louis's or keep on the right side (pun intended) of short-tempered blinkered sectarians like Cox or Henwood. Thank Christ there's at least one even-tempered and tolerant (German) American administering a number of Marxist lists (Hans Ehrbar) or people could get the idea that the only Marxist discussion permitted in a US Net framework was boneheaded Stalinism or blockheaded petty-bourgeois academic (or in the case of Louis Proyecchhht, would-be academic) Menshevism. By the way, Rob seems to imply that the Nicaraguan revolution was defeated by the imperialist guns. This is utterly wrong. It was defeated by non-Marxist, non-socialist, non-revolutionary leadership, both locally and internationally. The usual chorus of don'ts resounded from Moscow and Havana, and were listened to in Managua, preventing the spread of the revolution to the other countries of Central America. The formation of independent revolutionary trade unions was outlawed, many of their cofounders being deported to Panamanian jails for the crime of being foreign and Trotskyist (members of the Simon Bolivar brigade). The Cuban leaders in their day didn't have to listen to this shit from Moscow or their later selves, so they went ahead and formed a workers state, inadequate and nationally deformed though it was. The Nicaraguan leaders didn't change the state, and the people of that country and its neighbours paid the penalty for this treachery, which put the Central American revolution back by decades. As for Che in Bolivia, the whole strategy was wrong. The Cuban revolution wasn't carried out by impoverished peasants but by a combined rural and urban proletariat in direct defiance of both local and imperialist exploiters. The Cuban CP fell with Batista. What was missing in Cuba was a revolutionary Marxist party to organize the working class for its own liberation and run a non-bureaucratic regime that would be able to carry the revolution to other countries in Central and South America. Despite its weaknesses, the Cuban revolution was a huge inspiration to many Latinos -- as the failed Bolivian revolution had been a few years earlier in 1952. Che's adventure in Bolivia was suicidal voluntarism -- the Bolivian revolution is a creature of the mines and the cities (and nowadays the coca-producing poor peasants). As a model for revolutionaries to follow it meant nothing but disaster. Perhaps talking to the nuns about the experiences of people fighting injustice and exploitation in other places might open a path to more rational activities for some of them? I mean, every Texan who starts giving a shit about what the rest of the world thinks and does is a victory for sanity over obscurantism and bigotry. Cheers, Hugh --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
