Re: UN - tool of imperialism?

[Chris Burford <cburford@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Hello Jeff,

I think we are narrowing the differences a bit more here, though
major issues of principle and emphasis remain.

I did get it wrong about Lenin on the state, and corrected
it in the same post. However I think in simple marxism, people often
talk as if state structures are monolithically bad.

We might come together a little more if we agreed something like that
the key to a marxist line in Yugoslavia is that it must be based on the
interests and contribution of the working people.

Chris B.



>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
From: Jeffrey Booth <booth2@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, 22 Aug 1995 14:09:56 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Re: UN - tool of imperialism?

        I think an active marxist needs to use many platforms and
organizing tools to reach people; especially working people.  So I
wouldn't rule out using the U.N. or the bourgeois state as platforms to
propagate marxist ideas in much the same way the Bolsheviks used the Duma.
Even bourgeois law can have limited uses to building a revolutionary
movement.  (I was a paralegal at one time representing people at
unemployment benefit claims hearings).
        But all of these are at best tangential struggles to the main
revolutionary processes of building unions, workers parties, community
organizations and a revolutionary party as part of the working class.
        And in no way does the U.N. or the State or Bourgeois legal
Institutions offer the prospect of fundamental change or amelioration of
existing problems and conflicts like in the former Yugoslavia.  In fact,
they make things worse.  The U.N., a product of imperialism divided into
nation states, could never be reformed to serve the interests of working
people.
        
        Also, I don't see where Lenin had a simplistic notion of the
state.  Yes, it is used as an instrument of class oppression but when did
Lenin ever say the Bourgeois were an undifferentiated monolith?

                                        -- Jeff Booth


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