Re: John Holloway debate

["Derrick O'Keefe" <sankara83@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

In November 2002, I attended the OCLAE (Latin American & Caribbean Students)
Congress in Guadalajara, Mexico.  While the plenary session was going on, I
was checking out the bookstands in the lounge and came across a young,
perfectly bilingual guy hawking "Cambiar el mundo sin tomar poder".
We had the following dialogue, after I had scanned the book.

Me: "This looks like some old anarchist ideas about state power re-packaged"
Salesman: "Actually, it's a very new analysis, a new interpretration of Marx
and Marxism which is relevant to today's Zapatista movement".
Me: "Are you a supporter of the Zapatistas?"
Salesman: "Actually, I'm not here for the congress, I'm just selling this
book.  I studied marketing, and I don't know much about the Zapatistas, but
the book has a very good analysis".

I went back into the plenary, just in time to hear a guest speaker, a Cuban
revolutionary in his 70s or 80s whose name escapes me, say: "those who speak
about changing the world without taking power don't know the first thing
about revolution".

I would compare Holloway's writing on Marcos and the Zapatista's with Regis
Debray's writing on Che Guevara and the Latin American guerrilla movement.
They both amplify rather than critique the respective theoretical
short-comings of Zapatismo and focoismo.

Another "intellectual" that I've found painful to read on the Zapatistas is
Naomi Klein.  Marcos, for her, is the humble, New Age leader who "listens
more than he speaks" as opposed to the hectoring big men bent on taking
state power.  In lauding Marcos, she cynically dismisses generations of
revolutionaries for there foolish pursuit of power.  Somehow she sees
humility in Marcos writing that "Marcos is a Palestinian in Israel, Marcos
is a Mexican housewife on a Saturday night"...Marcos is every oppressed
person on Earth, etc.

In February, Naomi returned from Porto Alegre depressed, writing a column
titled "What happened to the New Left?" (several days before the largest
protest in human history).  She was upset that "big men" like Hugo Chavez
had ruined the annual get together.  The ink dripping with cynicism, she
wrote something like "Hugo Chavez made an appearance to declare his regime
part of the movement".

Klein certainly has an aversion to state power.  She has worked hard to stay
away from any affiliation with the New Democratic Party, Canada's social
democratic party, but recently spoke at a big fundraiser for COPE, the civic
social democrats here in Vancouver, who since coming to power have spent
millions wooing the Olympics for 2010 and approving a "police crackdown" on
the city's Downtown Eastside, while dragging their feet on opening harm
reduction sites promised for last January.

Indeed bitter that Klein is Canada's most prominent left "intellectual",

Derrick


"If you tremble indignation at every injustice then you are a comrade of
mine" - Ernesto Che Guevara

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