Re: AUT: Argentina: Diary of a Revolution

[true leveller <digger_communist@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Scott

You're being a bit hasty. I thought that the whole
point of the author John Jordan going over to
Argentina was so that he could 'learn lessons' for the
wider struggles, especially where he is based here in
the UK. So it's not parochial at all.

Also, I don't know of anyone who seriously thinks that
we should 'copy' what's going on in Argentina--i.e.
growing veggies on roadsides (though that practice was
widespread among Gypsies before the government had one
of their periodical crackdowns) and so on--it is more
the general movement of the events of the last tweleve
months that people have found inspiration in.

As one interviewee said: their aim is not to take
power but build it for themselves. Through this there
have been developments of direct democracy, autonomy,
new social networks of solidarity and subjectivity.
You suggest that workers should 'organise to take
power', but this is precisely what most reject: que se
vayan todos!

You can never start from a blank sheet of paper, so
yes, there will be setbacks, mistakes and doubts, but
what do you suggest should be done? That we sit and
wait for someone to come up with all the answers?

Regards

Barry


--- Scott Hamilton <s_h_hamilton@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> John Jordan wrote:
>
> >The futile dream of taking
> power and running governments has been abandoned,
> and
> >politics has returned to the physical processes of
> >everyday life, to the necessities of the immediate
> moment.
>
> In an article that talks a lot about hope this seems
> a
> very hopeless statement. Jordan's seems to be just
> another article which tries to present the situation
> in Argentina as an end in itself, but surely as
> revolutionaries with a bit of understanding of
> history
> and of the nature of capitalism we can see that the
> situation in Argentina is only temporary - that it
> has
> to go either to victory, ie taking power, or to
> defeat, ie being killed, imprisoned or at the best
> politically muzzled by counter-revolution.
>
> Even if we ignore this stark fact, we can still ask
> what is so great about what the Argentineans have
> now?
> They are suffering terribly. According to what I
> read
> 500 kids are dying daily from the effects of
> malnutrition. Surely, with what we know about
> capitalism and about socialism, we can conclude that
> it will be impossible for this suffering to be
> resolved until the economy is brought under the
> control of the workers, and the rule of the market
> is
> replaced with a democratically-decided workers' plan
> for production, distribution and consumption. Even
> then, revolution will have to spread fairly soon to
> other countries. Growing vegies on the margins of
> the
> market won't cut it. Jordan actually runs a danger
> of
> valourising the attempts by Duhalde to recuperate
> the
> workers' movement by creating 'microentrepeneurs' in
> its midst. (See the CWG article I posted recently,
> or
> think about the piquiteros in terms of early
> Methodism
> in the UK, and you'll see where I'm coming from.
> Working class self-help can easily turn into a prop
> for the system. Of course workers should
> self-organise, they have to organise to take power,
> not eke out a living in the gaps left by capital.)
>
> Jordan seems to assume that any attempt to seize
> power
> and put a workers' plan into effect would only
> create
> a corrupt or authoritarian government. He seems to
> have the view that any organisation on a large scale
> will inevitably become bureaucratised. But why is
> socialism on one commune a viable prospect, when
> socialism in one country was such a flop?
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> =====
> "Revolution is not like cricket, not even one day
> cricket"
>
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=====
"...struggle is a conflict defined not by the indifference of the two sides in their distinction, but by their being bound together in one unity. I am not one of the fighters locked in battle, but both, and I am the struggle itself. I am fire and water..." G.W.F. Hegel.

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