Re: AUT: Re: Palestione, Israel and other ghettoes

["cwright" <cwright@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>
> Chris, I think Lenin, Trostky or Spain (1936-39) have  very
> little to tell us about the current situation of the East
> Mediterranean.

Indeed, Harald, I agree in so far as repeating their formulas has very
little to tell us about it.  That was my point, which I intended to
elaborate, but apparently failed to do so.

> Neither you nor Scott seem to have even given a thought
> to the possibility that when I say East Mediterranean, I
> mean precisely an East Mediterranean perspective, and
> not a narrow, stupefying, and hopeless,  Israeli-Palestini
> one. We are not talking about an island.

Could you develop this.  I actually said nothing about it because I found it
intriguing and largely agreed with it, but I also was not clear on where you
were going with it.

> With viable I mean precisely viable, as something with
> a possible future other than self-destructive. Which
> perspectives being promoted makes a difference.
> When you write; "I assume viability is an issue since we
> are thinking of an achievable demand less than
> immediate workers' power," you assume wrong. Certainly
> not in  that actually achiving something is a point , and not
> in that "immediate workers' power" not being on the agenda
> (there exists nothing even close to ripe social revolutionary
> conditions) but in speaking as if the demand in itself,
> taken in isolation, was the crucial, and not the radically
> different perspective in entails, and the possibilities it
> opens for.

So we actually agree that the intent of the demand, not the demand itself,
is what matters, that it shifts the focus from a very narrow situation to
one which is broader and about offering different possibilities.  I really
meant no more than this which is why I focussed on the issues of
self-organization and not on a single demand per se.  Maybe I am missing
something, but I don;t see us as disagreeing, but if you feel I missed
something, please go on.

It could easily be extended and put within the
> context of an advocacy of direct democracy, and not
> only in words but in organizational forms. And even
> if far less than this is accomplished, it none the less
> has the potential of preparing the ground.

If I understand you correctly, we are talking here about the fact that
revolution is not something which pops up on the morrow, but which requires
the development of practices in the here and now which change the terms of
existing struggles at whatever level.

> Nor is it a perspective necessarily so foreign to many
> Palestinians and other Arabs in the region, even if such
> voices do not get much coverage, and tend also to be
> beyond the compreshension of not only mainstream
> journalist but also "leftist" in "the West" and other
> consumers of images of "third world heroes and martyrs".

As I see it, the pan-Arab impulse is one which is not simply
pan-nationalist, but means a sense of not being simply people facing
'national' problems, but an already existing sense of a broader, regional
sensibility which can also be played out in class terms.

> "Our task," (as you phrase it) to me is simple saying what
> seems to make sense, nothing more spectacular than that.
> Libertarian communism makes sense to me, and acting
> in ways and promoting ideas that are compatible with
> such and end, likewise.
>
Ok, I am not sure we disagree so much as I prattled on too long.  Btw,
saying what makes sense is usually a rather spectacular activity, as we live
in a world which generates vast masses of non-sense posing as sense.  In
that, I was actually supportive of your points on this and hoped I was
supporting them and building on them.  Maybe I talked past it.

On the rest, I agree.

Cheers,
Chris




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