A defense of NACLA

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

[One of the more respectable members of this mailing list, as opposed to a
thoroughly disreputable element like myself, crossposted my write-up to
another list. This was the peeved response from another subscriber.
Basically I believe that the unwashed mob, including me, only has the
Internet as a way of sounding off. If it was up to some of the "respectable
left", this avenue would be cut off if they had their way.]

I am disturbed by both the content of a message concerning NACLA Report on
the Americas (Dud Anti-Imperialist...) and the covering note by, I believe,
xxx.

The forwarded item, from Louis Proyect, castigates NACLA Report in a
language and style customary to the left during the period of what I call
National Industrial Leftism. He even throws at it, as evidence of its
erroneous ways, the quite separate publications of just one of its more
than 20 Editorial Board members.

[National Industrial Leftism? I sort of like the way that sounds. Perhaps
we should change the name of the list to
nationalindustrialleftism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]

Many people will consider that any journal castigated by Louis Proyect must
have something good about it. NACLA is one of them, and I will risk the
wrath of the Romantic Revolutionaries (trying desperately to get the world
back to the period, theories and strategies of the Russian Revolution) to
say so. Rather than repeating the mantras of earlier days, the NACLA Report
has developed a tradition of radical and committed scholarly research,
presented in non-academic ways, of address to an actually-existing
capitalism (globalised, neo-liberalised, networked, complex) and the
actually-existing social movements in Latin America. It also makes room for
dialogue.

[Trying to get the world back to the period, theories and strategies of the
Russian Revolution? Actually the capitalist class has been doing its best
to turn the world back to the pre-WWI period when the welfare state did not
exist and when trade unions were powerless and when bloody regional wars
threatened to escalate into global proportions. Under these circumstances,
it would be treasonous not to recapture the theories and strategies of the
Russian Revolution.]

I do not have at hand the issue Proyect attacks. But I do have the previous
one on 'Rethinking Human Rights', July/August 2000. It includes pieces on
'Human Rights (and Wrongs) on the Global Assembly Line', a critique of
women's rights policies under neoliberalism (and understandings of such in
the movement) by Veronica Schild, and an excellent piece by Alison Brysk on
'Globalisation: The Double-Edged Sword'. This piece, by a specialist on the
local-to-global indigenous rights movement, presents globalisation as a
contradictory phenomenon, both threatening human rights and providing
'unprecedented opportunities for transnational activism'. For people who
prefer their Leftism to be informed by internationalism, by the social
struggles of the present day, by contemporary critical social theory, and
by an address to real-life women, rural people, indigenous peoples and
workers, in the Americas, and who do not have access to Spanish-language
periodicals, this is a must. Check it out.

[Yes, I actually commended the latest issue of NACLA and even supplied the
url so people could order it online.]

But, as I said, I was also disturbed by the covering note, which seemed to
simply endorse the Proyect Project:

'This post is interesting, not only because of coverage of Colombia issues,
but also because we can thank goodness the NACLAisation of the only
comparable periodical produced by the anti-imperialist N.American left,
xxx, didn't go this route...'

NACLAisation? The latest pejorative? To accompany 'liquidationism',
'zionism', 'trotskyism', 'bourgeois nationalism', 'leftism', 'rightism',
'centrism'?

[If these folks can't take the heat, they should stop publishing such
outrageous articles. When editorial board Mark Chernick proposes that the
US army might actually be used to mop up the Colombian paramilitaries, he
is taking Latin American studies--his speciality--and wiping his ass with it.]

So long as Leftists in xxx indulge in such cheap attempts to divide the
Left, locally or globally, into the politically-correct and the
politically-incorrect, so long will they remain in a ghetto of those who
prefer the dead past to the living present. Life is elsewhere. Amongst
other places, in the pages of NACLA bulletin.

[Life is elsewhere?  I feel utterly trounced from an ideological standpoint.]




Louis Proyect
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