RE: Ultra lefts, full throttle (was Re: Final thoughts on the Nader campaign)

["Mark Jones" <jones118@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

While Lou is surely right to say we have to avoid sectarian wildernesses,
what we do have to have before embracing mass populist politics is some kind
of historico-theoretical synthesis capable of programmatic development and
serving as the basis for a rational and stringent critique of the very
populism we are embracing. I think the elements of such a synthesis do exist
and can be simply put in terms of our generally-shared understanding of the
nature of the conjuncture: capitalism, globalism, inequality, social justice
and environmental justice. And I would crucially add to that, the tendency
towards general crisis, the forms and processes of which most urgently
require analysis and demand programmatic debate and political interventions.
The campaign to elect Nader has no meaning except as a campaign to educate
people about the nature of this general crisis and to try to further develop
the emergent mass politics, to give it ideological depth and to try to
generate autonomous consciousness, to create a space for political and
social autonomy, for prefiguring alternative futures thru and beyond the
crisis of capitalism. We have to tirelessly show and demonstrate the
multiform ways in which the capitalist world system is radically
unsustainable and is failing not only its social constitutents (the world's
proletariats, ethnic communities,  and so forth) but is even failings its
own accumulation mission. That capitalism's responses to crises of ecocide,
resource, energy and water depletion, global warming, of mass pandemics and
malthusian dieoffs in Africa, Russia and elsewhere, are not rational even in
its own terms. We have to make clear the nature of the historical impasse
which world capitalism has entered and to demontsrate that its hegemony is
also unsustainable. If civilisation is to continue at all it will be and can
only be because of the emergence of an autonomous proletariat capable of
asserting its own political and social hegemony as a class, and this is
something which will not come about by accident but has to be consciously
striven for, through the discourses of working class culture and the
assertion of its historical weight as the centre of gravity of the
historical process. It is more clearly true than ever, that the choice is
socialism or barbarism, and there is no other choice available; the
relevance of this message is greater than ever and the centrality of the
struggle to realise in everday life  the forms of collective consciousness
and praxis, as the material basis of proletarian hegemony, is clear and
undiminished. We have to learn to frame our dialogue in terms of these
themses and not allow our discourse to be captured by the crass narratives
of Naderite consumerism and its eclectic theoretical underpinnings, which
display the characteristic ambiguities and ambivalencies of all
petit-bourgeois social movements, reflecting the embodied consciousness of
disoriented middle strata who are not and never can be capable of social
autonomy or of hegemony and must inevitably serve one master: either the
proletariat or the big bourgeoisie. If you can make your politics ring like
a bell, and not get submerged in the swamp of philistine opportunism, of
unprincipled political compromise and class appeasement which is the true
hallmark of Naderism (like any populist petit-bourgeois socialism known to
history) then you can really achieve something. If you allow your discourse
to be captured by the obvious electioneering opportunism of the Nader
campaign, you will be lost utterly.

Mark

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> [mailto:owner-marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of Nestor Miguel
> Gorojovsky
> Sent: 15 July 2000 15:59
> To: marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: Ultra lefts, full throttle (was Re: Final thoughts on the Nader
> campaign)
>
>
> En relación a Final thoughts on the Nader campaign,
> el 14 Jul 00, a las 20:11, Louis Proyect dijo:
>
> >  American capitalism has enormous resilience--based as it is
> > on a vulturistic hold over the Third World. It has the capacity to
> > work its way through one crisis after another. Given this reality,
> > Marxist politics must involve detours and flanking tactics. This is
> > something that any self-respecting ultraleft finds impossible, their
> > main slogan being "March, march--full speed ahead!" Of course, it
> > never bothers them if no army is following them. In some cases, some
> > of the extreme purists feel compromised if they do have a following,
> > even of just a couple dozen. What were they doing wrong?
>
> Great politics in a nutshell. Now, a side comment. The problem with
> ultraleftism is not only that they lack followers, but that when they
> get some following, when they convince a concrete fraction of the
> working class to ride their train, they lead the train to a
> catastrophe. And when the catastrophe is imminent or takes place,
> they jump out from the engine (or simply stand still, in amazement,
> staring from behind the crystals of the cabin overlooking the tracks)
> and the whole mob of followers is taken to disaster.
>
> They are spared the pains, or at least they have a capacity to
> recover that their "believers" absolutely lack, and then they begin
> anew somewhere else. This has always been their political meaning.
>
> Established classes do know this very well. Wasn't it Churchill who
> made a stinging remark on the reasonability of being socialist when
> one is in her / his 20s, and conservative when one is in her / his
> 40s. The remark is an expression of wisdom from the exploiters, which
> is that ultralefts are actually a part of their group. I am not one
> to blame people for their social origin, but it is very meaningful
> that the leadership of the most fervent ultraleft Trotskyist group in
> Argentina, the Partido Obrero, was recruited among the children of
> managers of imperialist concerns. Something similar happened with the
> ultraleft leadership in Córdoba during the late 60s, where fervent
> child-eating Marxist revolutionaries were bred in the quarter of
> Cerro de las Rosas, a newly established (by then) area of ascending
> petty bourgeoisie and managerial layers in the imperialist factories
> of the town.
>
> Back to a personal collection, each time I listen to these "great
> organizers of defeats" (strange, isn't it, that the indictment of
> Trotsky against Stalin can be so well applied to these self-appointed
> Trotskyists?) give their high-sounding discourse, I recall the sullen
> and darkened faces of the workers at the Canale factory, a quarter of
> mile off my house, after they were defeated all over the line during
> a struggle that was led by these ultraleft. Defeated people, I mean,
> defeated working class, discouraged, fired, scorched by a destructive
> tactics, who were almost begging for readmission in the plant.
>
> Their leaders, petty bourgeois ultraleftists (if I am not wrong, they
> belonged to the Partido Socialista de los Trabajadores of Moreno)
> were already somewhere else.
> Néstor Miguel Gorojovsky
> gorojovsky@xxxxxxxxxxx
> NUEVA DIRECCIÓN ELECTRÓNICA DESDE EL 10 DE JULIO DE 2000
> NEW E-ADDRESS AS OF JULY 10, 2000
> gorojovsky@xxxxxxxxxxxx
>