Re: israelian attack

[Gary MacLennan <g.maclennan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Dear Sevaq (?),

I am far from an expert on the 'Middle East' but I am extremely sympathetic
to the plight of the Arabs as is surely the totality of the subscribers on
this list.  I also did some solidarity work here in Brisbane in the 80s
with Iraqi students and the local Palestinian community and so I do have
some first hand experience of how the Arab people view what is being done
to them in such a horrifying manner.

You raised my point about the key role that might be played by the Egyptian
working class. I bow to your superior knowledge of course but my point
about the Egyptian working class is I think an example of something more
than my vulgar Marxism at work. It is my conviction that we can somewhere
somehow repeat the experience of 1917 - the decisive breakthrough of the
proletariat in an important nation state. I am also convinced that this
will galvanize the working class of the world in a way which now does not
seem possible.

What is most important is that we have hope in what Trotsky termed the
'clear bright socialist future of humankind'. I have been reading again
Walter Benjamin's Thesis on History No 18B especially since the recent
Michael Sprinker discussion of it in the New Left Review.

Benjamin writes that for the Jews the future was not 'homogeneous empty
time' but rather 'the strait gate through which the Messiah might enter'.
Sprinker detects in these lines the revolutionary politics of a Luxembourg
rather than a Lenin but that is something we might discuss another
day.  For me the Benjamin theses are a great source of hope for the
future.  It will not be like the present.

Dies Irae will come and we will sit in judgement on the butchers of today.

The Irish have been sustained for years in their long struggle against
British Imperialism by the slogan 'Tiocaidh ar la' - Our day will come.  I
commend it to you and your comrades.

warm regards

Gary





At 09:18  12/02/00 +0200, you wrote:
>Dear Comrades:
>         Lebanon has been facing this brutal savagery for so many years
> now. Its
>not simply a sturggle between 2 countries on a piece of land. It is a
>struggle of a third world country against imperialist beliefs and actions.
>The imperialist is not an unkown, the imperialist is the Zionist world
>movement.
>         It makes me wonder if this isn't what we leftisits should fight
> against,
>if this wasn't one of the main struggles of the dependecy school. At least
>we can condemn it, at least we can say or write something about it, but we
>waited Riad to post something on it so that we'll write something in
>return. Lets hope that will be the case. For it seems that nobody is
>interested on what's going on here in the middle east. Latin America, or
>Russia or sometimes the far east are the topics that is dealt with here all
>the time. I wonder why!!!!
>         I hardly see the point Gary made on the Egyptian working
> class.What if a
>sudden miracle happened and they regianed class consciousness, what would
>that change? Well nothing, the issue does not depend on workers. The issue
>has passed that stage. The party or the group who's destroying and
>targeting civilian areas is no one else but the Labor party of Israel!
>
>----------
> > From: Gary MacLennan <g.maclennan@xxxxxxxxxx>
> > To: marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> > Subject: Re: israelian attack
> > Date: Saturday, February 12, 2000 6:39 AM
> >
> > Thank you for this post Riad.  Good luck with the struggle.  Your enemy
>is
> > a brutal one but it can and will be beaten.  The key I believe is still
>the
> > Egyptian working class.  If they can overthrow their corrupt rulers, then
>
> > we may have a very different scenario in the 'Middle East'.
> >
> > regards
> >
> > Gary