Re: Malvinas

[Xxxx Xxxxxx <xxxxxxxxxx@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Nestor writes:

> En relación a Re: Malvinas,
> el 13 Oct 01, a las 16:44, Xxxx Xxxxxx dijo:
> 
>> does Nestor not think that supporting the regime's rights to
>> jail its opponents leads to a strengthening of the regime?
> 
> Ah, dragged along by Xxxx's ignorance, again. Let us put things clear here:
> does Xxxx believe that "the regime = the military"?
> 
> Yes, or not?
> 
> If yes, then I guess he would have backed all that happened after the defeat
> in 
> 1982, namely the continuation of "the regime" by "constitutional" means. If
> not, then he would perhaps suspect that the military could have broken an
> unwritten rule, and that perhaps the Americans helped them do so in order to
> get rid of them and pass on the Presidence to a "civilian".
> 
> In fact, all the supporters of "the regime" were hydrophobically _against_ the
> war, and all those who fought against "the regime" supported it more or less
> in 
> the terms I have exposed here. Suffice it to say that many of those who were
> tear gassed in May Square on March 30th, 1982, rallied at the same place on
> April 2nd, 1982. They understood that (as we say in my country)"at last a shot
> had been fired to serve Justice!".
> 
> Xxxx shares the position of Alfonsín, Cavallo, and Menem. I oppose the three
> of 
> them, and also the "regime".
> 
> Maybe too much for his British selfishness.

I'm quite baffled at how Nestor can  put so much energy into throwing all
sorts of nonsense at me but at the same time completely miss the point.

Nestor, you are a Marxist yet you say that opponents of the 1982 war should
have been jailed. Do you not see how your position only strengthens the
bourgeois state and gives it left cover?

 
> I am not sure that Louis shares Xxxx's suspect. The oil issue only added to
> the 
> interest of Britain. We Argentineans knew the importance of not having a
> British outpost on our territory much before oil became important in the world
> economy. That is why NO Argentinean government ever accepted the invasion, not
> even the most pro-imperialist ones.
> 
> Simply we shall not surrender the Islands to the Empire. That is all.

Jingoistic bourgeois nationalism. Argentine capital, that is the ruling
class, has no interest in the oil and gas reserves around the islands? What
utter nonsense. What's even more nonsensical is that you're naive enough to
believe the claims of your rulers. It is as nonsensical to claim that
Thatcher's motivation was "democracy" rather than saving imperial face and
maintaining British capitalism's interest in the economic potential of the
islands as it is for you to claim that the Argentine ruling class' interest
was in liberating the territory or reversing a 200 year old grievance rather
than deflecting attention from the regime's domestic troubles (as well as
it's terroristic campaign against the left) and oil and gas. Nestor, for all
your criticisms it's clear that your role was simply to give the Galtieri
regime left cover by supporting it to the hilt, calling for the jailing of
its enemies "in time of war" and providing a left cover for the true motives
of the regime, that is it's anti-working class and anti-left agenda.

> Much to the contrary, one of the great mistakes of the reactionary
> command during the war was not to grant land ownership to residents against
> the 
> Falkland Islands Company immediately upon arrival, and a special foreign trade
> system (among other possible measures).

This much is true, had capitalist relations been overthrown on the island
the tenor of the action would have been quite different. But how could a
bourgeois reactionary Argentine ruling class been expected to allow for
islanders what it denied to the mainland? Nestor's dismissal of this failure
as some sort of mere tactical error belies a fundamental failure to grasp
that the true enemy was the military regime in which Nestor invested his
hopes of liberating the islands. Had he argued instead that the imperialist
war should have been turned into a civil war, that is a class war, argued
that the true motives of the regime were not liberation of the Malvinas but
perpetuation of its own rule over Argentina and defusing domestic unrest,
had he argued this instead of that opponents of the war should be jailed
(thereby strengthening the regime's grip) then, perhaps, his analysis would
approach something resembling Marxism rather than being a cheap left cover
for bourgeois nationalism and the reactionary junta.

I believe a call for a socialist federation of Argentina and the islands
would have been a correct call, indeed it was a call which Militant
supported as counterposed to Nestor's call to support the bouregois
government in a time of war, believe its propaganda rather than reveal its
true agenda and support it with a call to jail opponents of the war.

> but Xxxx believes that Argentina and Britain are in the same class. Well,
> you can wipe away this reason,

That's not at all what I said, it seems though that Nestor believes that the
ruling class in Argentina is somehow less capitalist, less bourgeois, than
the ruling class in Britain and is thus worthy of his critical support at
times of military adventure.


Xxxx 

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