Re: Forwarded from Anthony (reply to Yoshie)

[Carrol Cox <cbcox@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Charles Brown wrote:

>
> CB: There were also significant divisions in the U.S.ruling class from the 
> fifties
>through the mid seventites, with the Civil Rights/Peace/Countercultural 
>movement the
>progressive offense in response to it. Kennedy assassination and Nixon 
>impeachment
>were emblemetic heavy blows struck back and forth between the right and the 
>left of
>the big bourgeoisie.

Charles, I just don't count the Kennedy assassination. It doesn't make
sense and it takes one of the supreme imperialist motherfuckers off the
hook to make Kennedy represent anything decent, or to think that
the "right" had him assassinated. We've had this argument before, but
I don't think the argument for a conspiracy is interesting enough to even
explore it any more.

In the case of the civil rights struggle, the state and its ruling class
supporters had a real challenge on their hands -- and it resulted in
the kind of fireworks that might go on inside the top executive
branches of a corporation if it found that a rival was cutting into
its territory.

A division over tactics or strategy or how to meet
a given threat is a difference in OPINION. To be a division that
is *significant* in any substantial way there have to be major
objective material differences (as there was between the
slavedrivers and their merchant allies on the one hand, the rest
of the U.S. ruling class on the other hand) -- and even then they
don't count unless there is a strong working class movement.

It is a terribel waste of left brain power and left resources to
fuss and fume about differences of opinion among rulers. Fer
crying out loud, this is a *capitalist* ruling class we are talking
about, and they respond to the realities of capitalist life as
much as anyone -- and the chief of those fundamental realities
is the individuation of the social order. They are all a bunch of
fucking individuals. They fight each other all the time and it
doesn't make the slightest difference.

This business of blowing up such relatively petty fights into
great big DIVISIONS in the ruling class is just plain nonsense.
The ruling class was perfectly united in pursuing the Vietnam
War -- they simply developed more and more varied
individual opinions as the mess got bigger. No significant
block in the ruling class had any objections to the Christmas
Bombing of 1972 (date?)* By that time all of them, "left"
and right, had pretty much accepted the foreign policy now
advocated by Powell -- Bomb 'em but don't stir up the public
at home with casualties.

Actually, there has always been only one reason people daydream
about divisions in the ruling class. It lays the basis for cooperation
with that ruling class under the guise of cooperating with its
allegedly more progressive element.

That happens in imperialized nations (the "third world"). It does
not happen in central imperialist states unless they are under
EXTREME pressure from their own working classes.

Cox's have an alert life expectancy of about 84. So I'll probably
still be around in 2014 to mock at all those people who thought
this election was more than a triviality.

Carrol