re: Dialectical Emptyness

[bon moun <sherrynstan@xxxxxxx>]

oops.  posted this back to MT, because of that glitch with the address.
here it is to the whole list.

At 07:17 PM 6/28/00 +1200, you wrote:
>Stan wrote:
>> since the left in the US is still heavily
>>contaminated, IMHO, by the vestiges of McCarthyism.
>
>I don't follow.  Could you elaborate?  By McCarthyism do you mean
>anti-communism in a general sense?  If this is what you mean, I'm not sure I
>agree.  On this list are stalwart defenders of the old Soviet order.  People
>certainly argue with them, but they are not banned or witch-hunted.
>
>M
>
I will try to elaborate.

McCarthyism was much more than the HUAC hearings and witchhunts and
blacklisting.  These were the officially sanctioned direct actions.  But
those actions were intended to have consequences--which were the real
objectives of McCarthyism.

We know now that the government fed money into all sorts of phoney
scholarship, which has since been so widely recirculated that the original
antecedents of that "scholarship" have been effectively insulated from
critical scrutiny.  And the American Historical Society, upon looking into
old records, like the NKVD's for instance, from the USSR--just one
example--and found that they do not support either the quality or the
magnitude of the so-called crimes of Stalin, and nor does the scientific
interpolation or extrapolation of demographic shifts there.  We have also
traced many of the figures that were bandied about regarding the USSR back
to fascist sympathizers, like Hearst and Conquest and various Ukranian
Nazi-sympathizers.  This is a book length discussion, but I put it out
there just to point out how thoroughgoing this process was.  I would also
point out that we still do the same thing.  We don't seem much emphasis on
the fact that Saddam Hussein was systematically provoked by the US and
Kuwait to ensure a war, that the Racek "massacre" was a hoax, a ind of
Balkan Gulf of Tonkin, or that we have transformed the FARC into
"narco-terorists" and the like.  We are all well aware of that process in
our own lifetimes, and we need to be cognizant that it is not something new.

The post-modernists have done us a couple of favors, I think.  One in
particualr is they have shined a bright light on the role of discourse and
returned our attention to the ever important study of how we "know" things,
and how language itself structures that "knowledge."  I have my isues with
PM, but they deserve credit where it is due.

"McCarthyism" is shorthand, obviously, for the whole era of systematic
ideological preparation for the Cold War--we might as easily call it
Trumanism.

But here are just some things it did:

(1)	It posited a "moral equivalency" between Hitler and Stalin (and now
Saddam, Milosevic, Qadaffi, Kim Jong Il, etc).  This shortcuts critical
analysis of the fundamental differences between all these regimes, but more
importantly it makes the defense of the USSR (as one example) tantamount to
being a holocaust denier.  Ludo Martens' book Another View of Stalin is as
thoroughly researched and footnoted as any piece I have seen lately, but
Martens could never have written this if he worked as a professor in many
American universities.  Other theses would have been far less risky to
one's reputation and career.

(2)	It personified and homogenized entire societal histories.  It allows us
to indulge in shortcut thinking around logically indefensible categories
like "stalinism" or "totalitarianism" and thereby bypass the real critical
work of concrete examination of the far more complex realities of those
histories.  Today, we have the same thing:  Iraq becomes Saddam--the
caricature of evil.  How many people know anything about the actual
accomplishments of Iraq and its people, before Saddam became our official
enemy?  All most of us know is what we saw on Headline News.  And constant,
matter-of-fact repetition becomes the conterfeit of validity.  I see the
same thing now with regard to the recent Haitian elections, where the OAS,
with the press following like ducklings, is trying to discredit the results
of the election by continually repeating the same set of prevarications
again and again about the CEP's vote count.  It's construction of a pretext
for action that we will be required to finance.

(3)	It deliberately supported--as has recently been publicized--the work of
the NCL, that is, non-communist left, to create a sense of legitimacy among
this category that sharply divided it from anyone who would dare to
continue to claim Marxism.  It has almost become--this from my own
experience with many academics and folks from non-profits (where I worked
for four years)--shocking to defend existing socialism, and can result in a
kind of ostracising.  One becomes a little less "with it," a less deserving
of a hearing--one is pigeonholed in a pre-existing caricature.  This
caricature is one of the most insidious and effective products of
McCarthyism, and yes, much of the left still not only accepts it but offers
it as a kind of obligatory signal in its pronouncements.  It's become a
credential.
I was never so effectivley and dangerously (in terms of threatening my
livlihood) red-baited--which I have been quite a lot here in North
Carolina, even in the capital newspaper--as I have been by liberals, social
democrats, and anarchists... and also by the NAACP.  This, when in all my
actions, I have supported virutally every actual political initiative they
have engaged in (except for the recent fad of attacking China).

Whew!  I have just missed my morning walk, and have to take my daughter to
the doctor.  I hope this is enough to sort of explain what I meant.

Best to all,

Stan



"If insurrection is an art, its main content is to know how to give the
struggle the form appropriate to the political situation."

			-Vo Nguyen Giap



"Rather than seeking comparabilities in statistical terms among what are
all too often superficial features of different situations, comparabilities
must be sought at the level of determinate mechanisms, at the level of
processes that are generally hidden from easy view."

			-Eleanor Burke Leacock



"Every day one has to struggle that this love to a living humanity
transform itself into concrete acts, in acts that serve as examples, as
motivation."

			-Ernesto "Che" Guevara