Re: Aussie/NZ Imperialism

[Nestor Miguel Gorojovsky <nestor@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

El  6 Oct 99 a las 19:29, Louis Proyect nos dice(n):

[Quoting Phil from NZ at first:]

> > It's dead easy in Australia and NZ to
> >whip up some hostility to the French or the US.  The real
> >challenge is finding ways of exposing the imperialist
> >nature of our own ruling classes and their states.

> The hostility was not to the "French or the US". It was to
> nuclear war. The protests were not just happening in New
> Zealand. They were world-wide. [...] It was
> absolutely obligatory for Marxists to fight for unilateral
> nuclear disarment. If I was a Marxist in New Zealand in
> the 1980s, I would have pushed for this and against
> calling for some kind of equivalence between the west and
> the USSR.

[...]

> It is a serious sectarian mistake to denigrate this
> movement. If another like it arises, I would expect
> serious Marxists to act as the militant left-wing.


I agree fully. But it is also a serious sectarian mistake
not to take into account that the rejection to nuclear war
has a different meaning in different contexts. In the USA
it clearly points to the ultimate murderer of humanking,
that is the bourgeoisie, in the person of the American
bourgeoisie. In the fSU, the meaning could be quite
different, for example (I am just posing this as a
reasonable possibility, OK?) a way to weaken the decission
of the Soviet peoples to fight the imperialists to the last
consequences: "Yes, we do have the nukes, but we shall
never use them because they are ugly and toxic". In a Third
World country with enough technological development it may
imply a subtle attack against industrialization in general
(as the case was in Argentina). And in a minor imperialist
country where the bourgeoisie wants to establish its own
hunting ground within the larger scenario of the greater
powers, it may be a useful pretext for the bourgeoisie.

In each case, the anti-nuclear movement may (and I am sure
it certainly does) acquire different objective meanings. If
I had been a NZer in the early 80s, I would have opposed
militarism _in general_ and would have denounced the
"liberal" propositions of _my own, nuke-less, bourgeoisie_.

In my own country, I would not foster the anti-nuclear
movement, because the most outstanding representatives of
imperialism are the main supporters of our "pacifism". Dr.
Jose Westerkamp, for example, who has been a stout promoter
of Argentinian de-nuclearization in the mid-80s (and whom
some accuse of being in the payroll of the USA, which I
personally consider an outrageous lie but cannot wholly
reject), saw his programme realized through the Menem
government, the most reactionary one we have had in
decades. De-nuclearization meant that the Argentinian
nuclear power plants, probably the safest in the world, are
being let to private hands --so they will not be safe any
more.  Private / foreign hands implies, _always_, unsafe
operation. Our experience in private management is already
overwhelming, take the death rate in the air transportation
industry before 1991 and after it.

Nestor.