Lou: about Mayans, Zapatistas and debunking myths

[Armand Diego <causebellum@xxxxxxxxx>]

In debunking the autonomists and neo-anarchists (who
have little of the original working class fighters of
anarchism)and the charlatan Holloway, a
neo-"socialist" utopian de mode and essentially a
charlatan, I can't but sympathize with Louis' comments
but I think in order to be effective, his critique
needs some corrections.

Louis Proyect wrote:

 As should be clear to even the most casual observer
> on the left, the Chiapas rebellion has become as
much of a paradigm for the post-Marxist
> left as October 1917 was for an earlier generation
> of Marxists.

Probably for their standard-bearers, but no
historically.  The Russian Revolution and the
Comintern had a lasting impact in the world's
structures of society - both negative and positive.
It was one of the most important, critical events that
shaped the 20th Century.

Any critique of neo-anarchists and pseudo- autonomists
should start by debunking the myths, one of them being
the structural importance of the Zapatista rebellion
and the bad poems of the masked Sub-commander.

In contrast
> to the anarchists, autonomism has positioned itself
> as retaining the
> emancipatory core of Marxism, while disposing of the
> dross. This is one of
> the central messages of John Holloway's "To Change
> the World Without Taking
> Power". We will assess this claim in due time, but
> first some background on
> the Zapatista left in general and how it took shape.

Without the discussion about the transition of power
by and for and from the working class, through its own
institutions there is no Marxism, just utopian
socialism.  It is not new but an ideological
regression.

Now, what it should be a discussion as to how advance
Marxism is to theorize once again about the state and
revolution and sink the old theories of the party as
taking power substituting the working class and its
revolutionary institutions, but that is another
matter. Autonomists and neo-anarchists thrown the baby
together with the water, so to speak.

> Although the Chiapas revolt grew out of Mayan
> resentment over unemployment,
> land hunger, racism and other injustices that face
> indigenous peoples
> everywhere in the world,

Calling the Zapatista rebellion a Mayan one or even
assuming that the main reasons for it were the old
grievances of the Mayan people - as correct as they
are - is a distortion of a historical fact.  Chiapas
is no Mayan land, bu traditional, through he
centuries, the land of migrating - dozens of them -
native indigenous peoples.  I think there are
presently some 35 different nations and at least as
many indigenous languages in Chiapas. The Mayans have
a presence, particularly in the border areas with
Guatemala, but they are not the majority nor a
significant force among the general population or
among the Zapatista rebels. The old and real
grievances of the Mayans or for that matter all the
Indian nations - some of them former tributary nations
of the Mayans - of discrimination, anti-indigenism,
racism and super-exploitation are ever present.  But
the catalyst for the rebellion was the NAFTA agreement
that threatened the agricultural exploits of
community-based land-holdings as well as those of the
ranchers and others, the former bosses of the natives
now living in the jungle.  In that sense, we can
attribute the Zapataista the character of a rebellion
against globalization.  Not the first one in the
continent though.
> The Zapatistas became hosts of a series of
> 'encuentros' (encounters) in >

Guess why those gatherings of left wing European
social democrats and the swamp of the Latin American
and European left were called "Intergalactic
conferences."?
>
> These encuentros had a tremendously energizing
> effect on the post-Marxist
> left in the same way that Comintern conferences in
> the early 1920s had on
> people like John Reed.

Uhmmmm..... you're giving them too much credit again.
There were no revolutions plotted, no mass movements
developed, no international revolutionary movement
established ... just the snobbish bunch of
intellectuals and the childish game of neo-anarchists
and autonomistas.

> Even though the imagination-challenged Marxist
> movement tended to shy away
> from these gatherings, as early as the second--held
> in Spain in 1996--some
> stodgy participants were beginning to get impatient
> and think in terms of
> goals, even though this was the last thing on
> Subcommandante's mind.

Inaccurate. Marcos had very precise goals when he
headed the insurrection - actually the leadership fell
on his shoulders by default - and were a)
insurrection; b) March on Mexico City; c) uniting with
other insurrections that were supposed to happen
throughout the country and d) overthrowing the then
PRI government-regime.

Only when the rest of his semi-Maoist, 60s remnants of
organization failed to produce anything but a couple
bombs explosions in other states, did he assume
leadership (see, that is why he is a sub-commander and
not a commander)and restricted his movement to a
regional pressure group.  The rest is history. The
lack of goals of present day Marcos is the results of
his failures, not the strategy.  A pragmatic response
to more than a decade of stagnating progress of the
movement.

As for Holloway, he is no Marxist or revolutionary,
just some modern time Owens without the initiative,
the revolutionary temple and the intelligence of the
original one.  Oh, and he does not have Owens money
either.

They may believe they are something new, but
autonomists and neo-anarchists are part of the
regressive features of present day left politics.
They represent on the streets and the mass movement
what left wing academics in the US represent for
Marxism: the backward inclination to selfish
individualism and empty theories.

The US's and Europe's left circles are full fo
"former" and resented individuals from the left who
think they can do anything without building a
revolutionary organization.  They are the party of the
individualistic middle class individuals who reject
organization as a principple.  That is a class
position, a petite bourgeois one. Autonomists and
neo-anarchists are representative of the scourge of
petite bourgeois politics and Holloways such one of
its theorists.  Pure garbage.

DA

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