Re: Brenner in context

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Yoshie:
>You'd have to _demonstrate_ the long equation (or free association?)
>that you want us to accept: a UCLA professor = Analytical Marxism =
>G. A. Cohen = Stagism = the Second International = Social Darwinism =
>Karl Kautsky = Georgi Plekhanov = an Enemy of the Revolution = Hal
>Draper = Solidarity = _Against the Current_ = Max Shachtman = a
>theory of "State Capitalism" & "Bureaucratic Collectivism."  And then
>you need to _demonstrate_ that all of the above is indeed synthesized
>in Brenner's works, with textual evidence from them.

This would be virtually impossible, since Brenner has been so adept at
covering his tracks.

>If we follow this line of reasoning, though, we must, to take just
>one example, conclude that C. L. R. James was an enemy of the
>Revolution, for he, unlike Robert Brenner, indeed wrote a book called
>_State Capitalism and World Revolution_, with Raya Dunayevskaya &
>Grace Lee.

There's another side of CLR James that you are unfamiliar with apparently.
In the final stages of his life, he became an enthusiastic supporter of
Nkrumah and African socialism, black power, and--most importantly--the
Cuban revolution. In his article "Toussaint L'Ouverture to Fidel Castro",
he states that Toussaint's reolt "lives in the state which Fidel started."
Like Karl Marx, CLR James was evolving politically until his dying days. At
the last stages of his political and intellectual evolution, there was no
wider gulf than that which separated him from neo-Kautskyites who believed
that revolutions in places like Vietnam and Cuba were ill-considered
because the "forces of production" had not reached maturation. At this
stage in his life, James had largely dispensed with the "state capitalist"
theories which were largely an expression of a healthy aversion to
Stalinist bureaucracy and corruption. What is far less easy to understand
is the hostility of outfits like Against the Current and New Politics to
the former Soviet bloc--and EVERYTHING it stood for--when the aftermath has
been the cruelest blow to working people since the Great Depression.



Louis Proyect
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