AUT: re: Louis on Reeve

[Harald Beyer-Arnesen <haraldba@xxxxxxxxx>]

Louis Proyect wrote (extracted from different posts):

        Don't you love the arrogance of the imperialist left,
        dictating tactics to the Mexican guerrillas? Don't ever
        expect the Zapatistas to instruct the French autonomists
        what should go on their leaflets, they are much too decent
        and smart for this.
        --------
        (...) With respect to the possibility that the EZLN has
        vanguardist political principles, there is absolutely nothing
        wrong with this. After all, the ruling class has its own vanguard
        organized in the think-tanks, editorial boards, cops, etc.  Why
        should the workers and peasants not try to create their own
        leadership?
        --------
        What is the problem with dictating tactics to Sandinistas or
        Zapatistas: "Don't censor La Prensa"; "Stop harassing the
        Catholic Church"; "Stop kow-towing to the Catholic Church."
        Simple. It implies a level political playing-field, when in
        reality the discourse is unidirectional. It is always the
        leftists in imperialist countries who behave this way. People
        like Fidel Castro, Daniel Ortega and Subcommandante Marcos
        wouldn't dream of advising the Nation Magazine not to endorse
        Clinton.
                If there was a united socialist movement worldwide,
        where sister parties had equal weight, then such give-and-take
        on tactics might not be unseemly. In the given political
        context, it strikes me as big brother arroganc"
        --------
        The Cuban Communists also made their criticisms known to the
        FSLN, all along the way. These criticisms were made on a peer
        to peer basis. The sort of baloney that Reeves is writing, and
        you accept uncritically, is just patronizing advice from afar."


You also state, Louis, that "Reeves is a fool".

While Charles Reeve's and Sylvie Deneuve's critique itself
is not beyond critique (something I am sure they would agree
on), your main critique of them seem not be over the
accuracy or relevance of what they write, but for raising a
critique at all. A position I find absurd.

I may have misread you Louis, but it seems to me from the
above that what is an acceptable critique for you is that
exchanged between state capitalists, between people
many on this lists include among our class enemies.
It is quite understandable that someone who sees Fidel Castro
among the peers select and the Cuban "communists" exploitatition
and oppression of the working class within its boundaries as
admirable, will not find anything worthwhile in the critique
of the EZLN raised by Charles Reeves and Sylvie Deneuve,
whatever its accuracy.
It is also not unlogical that one who has "a profound respect
for Leon Trotsky as a Marxist thinker", (such an eloquent
defender of slavery) would have trouble finding anything useful
in the questions Charles Reeve raised in the post forwared
by Katha.

Writing a critique and "dictating tactics to the Mexican
guerrillas" is two very different things. It is quite a
mystery for me how Reeve and Deneuve could be in any position
to dictate anyone what to do. I also find it extremly
unlikely that they would wish to be in a position where
they could.

If you were less concerned about telling us what a complete
idiot Charles Reeve is and putting Katha down for earning her
living by writing for the Nation, you might have noticed that
Reeve in his reply to this list raised some crucial questions
concerning the situation developing in Chiapas these very
days. A development which puts your insistence on focusing
almost exclusively on the indigenousness in a strange, to not
say deadly light. That is at least how I see it.I hope to
return to this in a latter post.

Reeve and Deneuve may not have all the right answers, and
neither do I think they believe so themselves, but they
seem to have an ability to raise the right questions. Questions
which actually arise from the very logic of the form of
struggle chosen by the EZLN. I also think these are questions
very much related to the one of class composition, and with no
easy answers immediately at hand. They, like the current
situation, have to be created.

Harald

PS. Louis, corrrect me if I have misread you.











  in solidarity,
  Harald Beyer-Arnesen
  haraldba@xxxxxxxxx



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