Re: [A-List] Populism or Neoliberalism?

["Yoshie Furuhashi" <critical.montages@xxxxxxxxx>]

On 7/24/07, Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
> >
> > You don't need to convince me.  You need to convince people, at least
> > a critical mass of them.
> >
> > The thing is, though, you can't eat a pamphlet, however eloquently it
> > is written.
>
> The purpose of the Junius Pamphlet was to fill peoples's minds, not
> their bellies. In the pitiful absence of class politics in the Middle
> East and Iran,

Class politics, from above and below, exists in the Middle East,
including Iran.  It is just not politics that aims to establish
socialist society.  In that the Middle East does not differ at all
from the rest of the world, including much of Latin America.

The question is how (remaining) communists should participate in class
politics of people who are generally not yet -- and may never become
in their lifetime -- interested in socialism, in such a way as to
"take care of the future of" a communist movement while fighting "for
the attainment of the immediate aims, for the enforcement of the
momentary interests of the working class," as Marx and Engels put it,
the interests which include the defense of their nation from the
empire, for those like Iranians who live in the South.
--
Yoshie