For Carroll was Re: Forwarded from Anthony (reply to Yoshie)

[Gary MacLennan <g.maclennan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Carroll,

I enjoyed this post.  The bad tempered polemical tone was highly amusing,
but, old friend, you are dead wrong here.

I am inclined though to think that Anthony exaggerates what I see as a
snarling at the trough.  But whatever the case, American *politics* was on
the front page.  Recall your Maoism for Crissakes.  Politics was in command
and that provided space for the Left to issue comments connected to what
the workers etc see as reality.

For example armed with what I know now about the Federal Supreme Court I
have been seeking out any discussion I can on the whole post-election
debacle. I have dined out brilliantly on Lou's post on Scalia. While I am
trying to get to the heart of the basis of American power, on my television
the local whores are saying it is all too confusing and complex to
understand.


They always do that when things are blindingly simple.  The extreme right
made a grab for power in the USA.  To do so they disenfranchised many
thousand afro-Americans, Latinos etc. How can you say that that was all
trivial?

warm regards

Gary




At 02:03  15/12/00 -0600, you wrote:


>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