Re: Biel and Stiglitz

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

Stijn Oosterlynck:
> Finally, a question to Louis with regard to his last sentence about
> revolutionary violence 'The sooner the better as far as I am concerned.'
> In my opinion Marxism has a great deal to offer to emancipatory movements.
> However, Marxist theory of power tends to be one-sided and ignores the way
> power is all pervasive in human relations (anarchists are far more
> sophisticated in dealing with these issues).  This helps to declare why
> the real existing socialist countries tended to be authoritarian.  To me,
> more work needs to be done in dealing with these issues and finding ways
> to deal with them, otherwise revolutionary violence may well end up in the
> same failed
> experiments as we have seen in the twentieth century.  What would be your
> response to this?

I was just using a bit of overinflated rhetoric. My real views are much
more Gramscian in terms of thinking of protracted stages toward the
conquest of power in a country like the USA. When I joined the Trotskyist
movement in 1967, I was *absolutely convinced* that a revolution would have
taken place in the USA by 1990 at least--this conviction was deepened after
May-June 1968 in France and the events in Italy in the following year. Our
task right now, as far as I am concerned, is to develop a Marxist current
in the USA that has divested itself of sectarianism, while making sure that
it does not compromise with the bourgeoisie ideologically. That's mostly
what I try to through the Internet, either writing items about "democratic
centralism" on one hand or needling college presidents on the other. Who
knows, maybe in a few years at the rate things are going, I'll be using a
rocket-launcher...


Louis Proyect
www.marxmail.org


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