Re: [A-List] James Petras on Beslan - fire away

[Waistline2@xxxxxxx]

>>Obviously . . . the national question has changed greatly since the time of
Marx . . . who approached matters one way and the time of Lenin. What is new
that is the National Factor is not the role of American imperialism . . . but
its radically changed class and economic content.<<

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<<<Would you like to expand on this? >>>

Michael


Comment

Only very briefly for now . . . because the James Petras article specifically
avoided a general characterization of the "national question" . . . and
looked at the underlying economic tensions driving the event that is Beslan.

The tendency to treat the event that is Beslan from the lens of the
Palestinian question is seriously flawed and does not take into account radically
different history. The Palestinian relationship to the state that is Israel . . .
and the resistance of this poverty stricken proletarian mass does not mirror
the relationship of the people of North Ossetia to the present state that is
Russian. This is not an abstract issue about terror or bullets or bombs . . . but
rather the fact that the new political terrorism comes from within the
bourgeoisie itself.

In other words I basically agree with the Petras article . . . that states
the terror campaign that is Beslan . . .  is a horribly reactionary campaign on
a part of the bourgeoisie and bourgeois nationalists . . . who should not be
confused with what the communists of the previous period called petty bourgeois
nationalism.

On the one hand I would not condemn the defensive struggle of the Palestinian
. . . but would utterly condemn say . . . the hostage taking of 1400 people
and the murder of 330 by a group of terrorists in America . . .  whose actions
were said to be driven by wanting the freedom of blacks in America and
identifying themselves as acting on behalf of American blacks and in retribution for
300 years of slavery.

Although one could say that the Palestinian struggle against the Israel State
had some features in common with the wave of rebellions that swept the
American Union in the 1960s and 1970s . . . to a degree Los Angeles in 1992 . . .
Cincinnati in 2001 and Battle Creek Michigan in 2002 . . . the concrete
presentation of the National Factor differs . . . as expressed in the social and
economic position of the African American people within the American Union and our
multinational state system.

In the world arena today the National Factor is not a question of the
proletariat winning the reserves of imperialism or compromising with the petty
bourgeois mass in their struggle against colonial entrapment. In fact this petty
bourgeoisie mass has been transformed on a planetary basis . . . this is not a
peasant mass . . . but the new proletariat being consolidated and concentrated
around the worlds large urban areas.

The line of march is fairly clear . . . the overthrow of capital foreign and
domestic. The political and economic landscape has dramatically changed since
the time of Lenin and his writing on the national question are simply
outdated.

Nor is the National Factor to day . . . presented as it arose in history
during the transition form agricultural relations to industrial relations . . . or
as Lenin and Stalin presented the question . . . the defeat of a "lesser
economic development people" in their striving to consolidate a home market.

Virtually every communist and progressive on earth has acknowledge that the
wave of colonial revolts from the end of WW II up to roughly the victory of the
communists in Vietnam closed out a period of history . . . and one can no
longer really speak of neocolonial regimes.

Beslan is not the striving of an oppressed peoples fighting a defense war but
rather an assertion of bourgeois political terrorists . . . striving to
attain a share of the loot stolen from the Soviet working class . . . and this is
rather obvious. What we communist face is a radically different class and
economic alignment in the world today and many communists jettisoned the self
determination slogan decades ago.

The break up of the Soviet State did not unleashed "National Liberation
Movements" . . . but rather political assertions by various criminal groupings and
organizations seeking control of the wealth and economic life created by the
Soviet workers.

Chechnya was not a colony within the Soviet System or even defined as a
nation in political terms . . . but rather an autonomous region. Chechnya today
cannot be described as a neo-colony because this is a political category
belonging to another period of history.

Old formula will not do and communists have to put on their thinking caps and
stop pretending that this is the world of Lenin and Stalin . . . it is not!
We have to do what Lenin did and describe what is in front of us. Clinging to
old formula is useless.

What is taking place in Chechnya today is a horribly reactionary movement . .
. that is drowning the area in a sea of blood and reaction . . . as the
criminal bourgeoisie cement its links with Russian and foreign capital. Here is the
meaning of Beslan . . . a horrific act of political terrorism to create the
space for the link up with foreign capital.

Russia today and the Soviet Union in yesteryear are primarily understood as
an ideological category in America and not real peoples . . . with real
histories . . .  and real yearnings and evolving political forms of administration
and economic development on the basis of public property. North Ossetia  have
roughly 700,000 peoples consisting of different nationalities on 8000 km . . .
and is highly industrial compared to other former Republics. Unlike South
Ossetia which is affiliated or a part of Georgia . . . North Ossetia is affiliated
with and deeply tied (fused) to the economic center of gravity that is Russia.
Chechnya was not a colony or suffered from a colonial status in the Soviet
system. A colony above all is an economic category . . . not simply "dependence"
based on an economic center of gravity.

The issue that is Beslan is not a question of Putin but political terrorism
on behave of the criminal bourgeoisie and bourgeoisie elements.

Lou calls this a national liberation movement or a movement for self
determination . . . no different in its essential features from the cause of the
Palestine and this is not the case. His violent anti-Sovietism . . . cloaked as
anti-Stalinism . . . prevents him from describing the new era.

On the one hand he is indignant over the suicide of a lad in China (1.3
billion people) who could not afford college and rush to condemn the ruling party
of China . . . but cannot understand that Beslan has nothing whatsoever to do
with the striving for emancipation of the toiling masses from the rule of
capital . . . foreign and domestic.

The event that is Beslan . . . the title of this thread . . . is political
terrorism by a most reactionary element of capital . . . literally War Lords . .
. seeking market shares and to consolidate its hold on the wealth created by
the Soviet workers and to mercilessly crush any communist striving of the
population.

This would seem fairly obvious . . . on the other hand this is not the case
with the resistance and death struggle of the Palestinian.

Actually . . . the connection between Beslan and Chechen Liberation from
"Russian tyranny" . . . however one defines this . . .  is tenuous at best but the
left front men of imperial capital have come forward to "prove" that taking
hostages and murdering school children in North Ossetia . . . is an expression
of the fight for Chechnya Liberation from the Russian State.

Why even make such an assumption? The anti-Soviet left in America . . . that
has long ago mastered Marxists phraseology . . . is the anti-Russian front men
for American imperialism. One can of course measure their high proclamations
and "democratic urges" with what they have written and their attitude towards
the multinational state that is the American Union.


Melvin P.