Re: fascism and unions and the masses

[jinigo@xxxxxxxxxxxxx (Juan Inigo)]

Carlos writes

>        I saw your last posting.  I browsed throughout and I didn't
>        see any point that deserves continuation of a discussion. I'm
>        not in the business of pedantic defenses of what I said nor
>        to read equally pedantic, baseless, statements from you.

The post that Carlos says he "browsed throughout" consisted in the concrete
data and documented sources through which I was showing how his "Sure. I
remember these facts", "You have your information wrong", etc., were
falsified, even fantastic, facts, figures and names he was presenting in
his miserable attempt to profit from the objective limitation of most of
the members of the list to be aware of the Argentine reality. Any
scientific discussion aimed at consciously ruling revolutionary action can
only be such, and not its ideological negation itself, provided it is based
on concrete documented data about reality.

But Carlos' point of view is that of this ideological negation. Only from
this point of view can concrete data and concrete sources be seen as
"pedantic, baseless, statements from you." But notice how Carlos is not
just inverting _my_ concrete data and sources, but he calls "equally
pedantic" his eventual attempt to support _his_ own arguments in a
scientific way.

It is clear that he is attempting to bring down all possible recourse to
science as the necessary base of ruling conscious revolutionary action to
an ideological inversion, aiming at hiding away his actual obvious
incapacity to sustain his fantasies on a scientific base. To give a further
example: since he can only feel himself ideologically safe when every
reality is inverted into a ghost or romantic story, he can only argue
against the scientific cognition of the nature of a specific moment in the
Argentine process of capital accumulation by labeling this cognition a
"demonization." Yet, when one is aware of the political forms through which
the Argentine process of capital accumulation has realized itself for at
least the last 25 years, Carlos' open claim for irrationally shows to have
a much concrete connotation.

"Toda la sociedad es responsable de lo que paso con los desaparecidos."
(The whole society is responsible for what happened with the missing
people). This was, at certain stage, the claim that the military and their
ideological speakers were trying to sell us to cover their responsibility
in torturing and murdering 30000 political militants (the figure includes
relatives and friends of the militants, people killed by "mistake", pure
economical convenience, etc., too). But this was not just a circumstantial
slogan. This was one of the concrete forms taken by the massive production
of an ideology characterized by its degradation of any political identity,
starting by their own.

What happened with the desaparecidos themselves was the most terrible
concrete manifestation of this destruction of the capacity to
differentiate, of recognizing to each concrete form its specific identity,
by criminally destroying their identity as human beings. Concrete people
with concrete lives, as I have referred to them in a previous post, became
NN corpses or not corpses at all. No identity left. Their babies were
appropriated into the families of the torturers themselves. Not only their
identity was destroyed, but they were given an inverted one.

Now, what was the political identity of the desaparecidos?

According to Carlos they were:

>        ... an entire generation of Marxists, student and labor
>        activists, left wing journalists and through that genocide
>        of that generation they forcefully maintained the Peronist
>        level of consciouness of the working class.

Would have they characterized themselves the way Carlos does?

Carlos has even claimed:

>I consider all those assasinated by the
>    "Peronist" Triple A, Isabel's and Peron's governments, the military
>    leadership MY COMRADES.

Would they have called Carlos their comrade?

Carlos can claim for himself the right to call his comrades the around 200
desaparecidos that belonged to the political line of Nahuel Moreno (this is
the figure  claimed by this line itself). 200 concrete people with concrete
lives desaparecidos is a monstrosity whichever the scale of the genocide.
But Carlos is not just talking for them, he claims for himself the right to
call his comrades the 30000 desaparecidos that didn't belong to his
political line. Again, were they?  What would they have called Carlos?

As I have pointed out in my previous post, PRT/ERP and Juventud
Peronista/Montoneros were the two political lines that incarnated the
apparent imminent transit of Argentine capitalism into socialism through
armed struggle. The military strength developed by the former and the
massiveness as a popular movement and its military strength too of the
latter, made them the absolute main target of the repression. The members
(and persons related to them) of these two political groups massively
account for the desaparecidos (together with a third group of people I will
refer to later)

Yes, the members of the PRT/ERP called themselves Marxists. But, while they
characterized the situation as being of a revolutionary nature, Moreno's
party characterized it as being pre-revolutionary. And this difference took
concrete form in the fact that, while the PRT/ERP engaged in armed struggle
to the last consequences on a national scale, Moreno's party was trying to
profit from the socialist voters that rejected the Peronist JP/Montoneros
left by presenting as the main candidate to the national elections a
Mannequin Piss whose only political "merit" was that of impersonating the
Argentine Socialist leader Alfredo Palacios (that in 1904 was elected the
first socialist parliament member in America and died in 1965), that was
still a very popular character with his big mustache, broad-brimmed hat and
peculiar manners, in the early '70. Yes, anyone with an interest in left
political opportunism (constantly defeated, of course) should take a good
look at Moreno's political history. From the PRT/ERP point of view, Carlos
would have been describing Moreno when he says

>        Sure, the imminence and desire of revolution were just
>        appearances ...
>        Capitalism
>        is ripe for socialist revolution since the 30s ...
>        the question was to fight for a political
>        program, a political characterization and not refusing to
>        take part based on intellectual demonization of those who
>        did.  That, my friend, was your capitulation to Peronism
>        an NOT your advancement in Marxism.

So, would the desaparecidos of the PRT/ERP have called Carlos their
comrade? Certainly not. They would have called him an opportunist and a
traitor, as they did call Moreno and his party! Carlos is depriving them of
their political identity and miserably appropriating it for his own
political use, a use they would have abominated from.

Would the members of JP/Montoneros have called themselves Marxists?
Certainly not. Among those with a theoretical formation, many were furious
anti-Marxists and based their position on religious conceptions; at best,
some of them considered that maybe Marx could have been OK for 19 century
England, but that he was useless in 20 century Argentine where the
"national and popular", and therefore, Peronist nature of the "socialist
revolution" was at the core of the question. Yes, they were those that
according to Carlos fantasies "capitulated" to Peronism because they were
"seduced" by Peron or have a "Peronist consciousness" but not a Peronist
ideology and political practice!

So, would the desaparecidos of the JP/Montoneros have called Carlos their
comrade? Certainly not. They would have called him an opportunist traitor
to the "national revolution" and "General Peron's command," Moreno was
boasting about only ten years earlier. They would have identified Carlos as
one of their concrete enemies. Carlos is depriving them of their political
identity and miserably appropriating it for his own political use, a use
they would have abominated from.

And Carlos is doing the same concerning the desaparecidos that belonged to
many different political groups of the left, that ranged from the Communist
Party (he Carlos boasts about being "crushed" by Moreno's group) to the
Peronismo de Base (that obviously "capitulated" to Peronism, from Carlos'
opportunistic point of view).

The third massive group of desaparecidos was formed by factory level union
activists that were not affiliated to any political party. After the 1976
coup, the army sent troops to the factories at the hour that the workers
were arriving, gathered all the workers with the clear objective that they
witnessed what was going to happen, and took away the activists that the
managers and union bureaucrats pointed out as "subversivos." Many of them
belonged to organized political groups. But many of them were spontaneous
union activists. Given their lack of organic political affiliation, these
were the most defenseless of all desaparecidos and even only today some of
the cases are reported for the first time. The vast majority of these
concrete persons lacked the political formation that would have eventually
enabled them to call themselves Marxists. And spontaneous union activism
has a clear political tradition for the last 50 years here: it is typically
performed by working class people that politically identify themselves as
Peronists. Yes, the most genuine working class expression of those that
Carlos has deprived from the beginning (in his world made of abstractions,
of course) from the capacity of having a "Peronist consciousness" that
emerged from their concrete Peronist political and ideological action, to
make their Peronist consciousness the product of their falling to Peron's
"concessions." Carlos is now profiting from their slaughtering not only to
deprive them of their political identity, but to invert their political
identity to satisfy his own political objectives.

No, the absolute majority of the desaparecidos would have not called Carlos
"their comrade." They would have called him many other things, a traitor,
their political enemy, an opportunist, but not their "comrade."

The military were careful to deprive the desaparecidos of their political
identity not only through their physical annihilation, but by erasing all
their political concreteness, all their political specificity, by reducing
all of their concrete reality to an abstraction, to the category of
"subversivos." "_Algo_ habran hecho" (They must have done _something_).
This was the common popular expression they succeeded in giving to that
deprivation of the political concrete content of the concrete life of the
concrete desaparecidos. And Carlos shows that they succeeded far beyond
this point: he is aiming at completing now their erasing of the
desaparecidos' political identity by giving it an abstract form with which
he miserably tries to turn the international left into a further partner in
that criminal erasing.

Carlos has constantly abused from the objective impossibility of most of
the members of the list to be aware of Argentine reality. Now he is showing
to which extent his degraded practice of openly telling lies about real
facts amounts to: he has abused from the objective impossibility of the
desaparecidos to present their own points of view, with the intention of
depriving them of their political identity and, furthermore, to profit from
this objective impossibility for his own miserable political aims.

Carlos has been formed in the practice of attempting to profit from erasing
other people's political identity to the extreme this is the only argument
he is able to use when he has to reply to the objections to his open lies
about the Argentine reality.

As I made clear in a previous post, I was not the political ally of those
that mistook in any degree the short term appearances through which the
Argentine process of capital accumulation was taking concrete shape for the
imminent realization of the necessity of capitalism to annihilate itself
into the general conscious regulation of social life, socialism/communism,
through the revolutionary action of the proletariat. I pointed out this
mistake itself as a proof of how far were they from incarnating the former
social necessity, that can only take shape in a revolutionary action that
is aware of its own necessity beyond any appearance. And I opposed to their
idealist "Yes, I do believe that in the present epoch, politics determines
over economics," the determination of the political, ideological, etc.
superstructures as the necessary concrete form through which the economic
base realizes its necessity and, therefore, itself.

But I do respect those people with whom I have politically disagreed and
that were tortured and killed, or persecuted in other forms as I was, when
we were struggling for owr political convictions. So I will never fall into
the sinister practice of depriving them of their concrete political
identity and their concrete political practice by turning them into the
high-sounding frivolity "my comrades." Yet, I would dare call some of them
my friends. And some were my work and study mates. The identity of those of
them that have been killed has not vanished away from my memory in any
sense.

And I further oppose my concrete practical solidarity with them and other
victims of the political persecution, and of them with me when it was me
who needed it, at the time when it counted beyond any attempt of
politically profiting from it (i.e., when the persecution was taking place)
to Carlos' very comfortable and, above all, very personally secure
affordable charlatanism he exercises today when he can describe himself
(except for being funny, since he is sinister) as,

>        Charlatans are a product and sometimes they are even funny when
>        we live in a situation in which we can afford that.  We are
>        living one of those situations now, so we can afford you.  But
>        not then, not in the future.

What Carlos tries to erase by depriving me of my political identity is the
fact that, as Nahuel Moreno and the majority of his party did, I survived
the repression. But, yes, there was quite a difference between me and them.
An immense part of that majority immediately, or along the following 15
years, went out of political action to mind their own personal businesses,
becoming, at best, some sort of nostalgic social democrats (not to mention
the ex-JP that are today high officers in Menem's government). On the
contrary, and as I did during the repression, I never stopped with my
political action of advancing in the development of scientific cognition as
a necessary concrete form of conscious revolutionary action.

And for doing so, I am here showing through concrete facts, figures and
names how Carlos falsifies the Argentine history to feed his ideological
reason of existence: the apparent legitimation in the name of Marxism of
the idealistic inversion "Yes, I do believe that in the present epoch,
politics determines over economics," that serves the ideological purpose of
making capitalism appear as being empty of its historical necessity of
annihilating itself through its own development, by bringing down real
determinations to a

>desire of revolution

Carlos shows the infuriation that arises from his impotence to sustain his
ideological inversions on any real concrete fact, figure or name. What
destroys Carlos' manipulations is the simple fact that I am alive and
politically active, that I was not one of the desaparecidos which would
have instantly transformed me into just another corpse to be deprived from
its political identity and thrown defenseless into his sack of "my
comrades."

And it is here that Carlos shows he is the ideological product of a social
process that needed to suppress all identity to the end. One of the most
noticeable ideological speakers of the military dictatorship claimed: "The
subversives call the rest of society to participate in the ceremony of
their own death." The inversion is here completed: the victims of the
repression, deprived from all political identity other than that of being
"subversivos," appear to be those that are claiming for their own death. At
the same time, the torturers and murderers have vanished away and it is
"society" (deprived in turn of its own political concreteness) that will
act as the executioner. Carlos applies this inversion by claiming

>        In doing all kind of revisions of history, you are just
>        a part of many pseudo intellectuals in Argentina who are
>        trying to build another "Official Story".  They even brag
>        about being intellectuals.  They do not realize that they
>        can claim that because the *real* intellectuals were
>        murdered between 1976-82  ...
>
>        Bureacracy and mediocrity *always* raise from a pool of blood.

The essence of the "official story" is that of the deprivation of the
desaparecidos of their concrete political identity. First, by putting them
in the undifferentiated sack of subversivos; later, by presenting them as
some sort of abstractly good-willed almost apolitical persons that were
slaughtered just because the barbarity of the military; now Carlos tries to
add a new chapter to this "official story" by depriving the desaparecidos
of their political identity by inverting them into the miserable category
of "my comrades."

Through his ideological inversions Carlos wants to create the appearance
that it would not be him that would like to have me out of this concrete
manifestation of political life, but the desaparecidos! Would I have needed
to change the documented facts, figures and names I presented here to show
the fantastic content of Carlos lies? Would the facts as El Cordobazo or
Vandor's death have been changed a posteriori by the survival of the
desaparecidos? In fact, the documented information I presented about El
Cordobazo and Vandor's death was published by a Marxist research center
more than two years _before_ the massive abductions and murders started.
And nobody objected the facts it contained then when it was a matter of
immediate political concern. Carlos is submitting the desaparecidos to the
further degradation of presenting them as being aimed at producing a
Stalinist-like historiography.

The only one who would not have been able to come here to falsify the
desaparecidos concrete history and political identity would have been their
not-comrade at all but despicable mentaly blood-tinted (as a political
partner of the repressors in ideologically manipulating the desaparecidos
to politically profit from them) Carlos.

And, of course, Carlos tries to completely erase any political meaning by
turning the substance at stake to a question of ... "mediocrity"! It
happens that Carlos' point of view is not that of scientific materialism,
but that of the idealistic inversion to the extreme of needing to label
itself Marxism. To add a further example to his declared faith "Yes, I do
believe etc.":

>        Argentinian working class continues to be
>        Peronist, not because your kind of annalysis but because
>        the Argentinian left-wing was destroyed.

Who could mistake any "kind of analysis" for a real cause?

>        Capitalism
>        is ripe for socialist revolution since the 30s and it is
>        no determinist like you ...

Who could want to deprive real concrete forms from their real determinations?

Only an idealist that is socially determined to fulfill the ideological
role of presenting the alienated conception that consciousness determines
the real conditions of human life, to oppose it to the scientific discovery
that "It is not consciousness that determines life, but life that
determines consciousness." (Marx) Carlos should look quite deeper into
himself when he claims

>       For
>       yopu all the processes are mental and intellectual.  Didn't
>       you ever heard about the famous "praxis"?

What is completely beyond the understanding of political zoretes as Carlos
(that bring down revolutionary action to Moreno's opportunism since they
are socially determined as the advocates of the irrationality inherent in
alienated consciousness) is that the production of the means for the
conscious ruling of revolutionary action is not a field of intellectual
activity but of practical political action; the field of practical
political action Marx opened by writing Capital. And this is my field of
practical political action. There is no place for intellectuals or
pseudo-intellectuals in it. But Carlos is here, as always, prisoner of the
appearances produced by his dialectics of "on the one hand ... on the other
hand" I have criticized by showing its ideological content in a previous
post.

Carlos is not just the perfect collection of political infantilism with his
reduction of the concrete forms taken by a national process of capital
accumulation to political "mistakes," "stupidity," "lack of understanding,"
"seductiveness," and "concessions to the working class," on the basis of
openly and grotesquely falsifying facts, figures and names. And, of course,
political infantilism is one of the necessary concrete forms taken by the
alienation of human consciousness as a power of capital to be opposed to
the necessity of developing a conscious revolutionary action able to rule
itself by being aware of its own determinations beyond appearances. Carlos
own specificity inside the direct production of the alienated human
consciousness is that of being a political product of the Argentine process
of capital accumulation that has come out from the ideological concrete
forms of the last military dictatorship and its further consequences. We
must never give him the benefit of forgetting his political identity,
making our memory the weapon against his miserable partnership in depriving
the desaparecidos from theirs.

Juan Inigo
jinigo@xxxxxxxxxxxxx



     --- from list marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---

     ------------------