[Marxism] Michael Moore, Wesley Clark and Jose Perez

[Mike Friedman <mikedf@xxxxxxxx>]

It's damn clear that there is a qualitative difference between the Bush 
period and preceding periods in terms of efforts at repression, which 
insert-head-in-sand tactics won't "disappear" (unlike administration 
policies toward Muslims and South Asians). There have certainly been 
previous periods of repression. These are characteristic forms of 
functioning of capitalist society, and certainly point to continuity -- in 
a general, uninformative way -- with the past. Nevertheless, in no previous 
period have there been such systematic efforts to reshape institutions, 
laws and ideologies to quash political dissent and allow for political 
repression; to institutionalize repression and delegitimize dissent in a 
permanent way. Previous instances were conducted under the amparo of 
existing law (the internments, even McCarthyism) or were isolated instances 
(the shootings at Kent and Jackson State Universities). This has to do with 
the individuals at the top only in an instrumental way; it has everything 
to do with your "relationship of class forces," which have clearly changed, 
and have clearly been changing. It's what we've called the rightward turn 
of the ruling class. Under the Bush stewardship this turn has assumed a 
qualitatively different form. Your attributive comparison between Bush, et 
al., and his Democratic predecessors is disingenuous, and a straw man 
argument. The periods were different. In a sense, both Democrats AND 
Republicans in earlier periods are "lesser evils" to the current 
administration. Since Democrats and Republicans track the political 
trajectory of the ruling class, the correct comparison is between Bush and 
his Democratic cohorts, and in that sense there is no real substantive 
difference. Recognizing the qualitative difference between the current 
administration -- with its bipartisan concensus on the "eternal war" at 
home and abroad -- and preceding periods, has nothing to do with "lesser 
evilism" and everything to do with correctly assessing your enemy. In fact, 
didn't Peter Camejo, in the Avocado statement YOU posted, agree with this 
assessment? Didn't he point out that it was this qualitatively dangerous 
turn by the ruling class that made it all the more important to break free 
of the two-party trap?

> Message: 12
> Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2004 20:54:38 -0500
> From: "Jose G. Perez" <elgusanorojo@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Subject: RE: [Marxism] Michael Moore and Wesley Clark
> To: "'Activists and scholars in Marxist tradition'"
>         <marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Message-ID: <002801c3dc9c$dd807ca0$0200a8c0@athlon>
> Content-Type: text/plain;       charset="iso-8859-1"
>
>
> Jim presents a pretty straightforward lesser evil argument in defense of
> Michael Moore's position.
>
>
> His central contention is that Bush is the greatest evil ever: never,
> ever, has there been a president as bad as repressive and fascist as
> Bush II.
>
>
> Not Wilson who led us into the Great Patriotic Slaughter number one,
> intervened against the October revolution, and carried out the Palmer
> raids.
>
>
> Not Roosevelt II, who led us into WWII, interned the Japanese and had
> the atom bomb built.
>
>
> Not Truman who dropped the bomb and started the cold war and the
> McCarthy witch-hunt.
>
>
> Not Kennedy who sent 15 kilotroops into Vietnam, invaded Cuba at the bay
> of pigs, came within hours of blowing up the entire human race during
> the Crisis of the Caribbean in October 1962, and sat back and did
> nothing while mad dogs of both the human and canine variety ripped into
> civil rights protesters in the south.
>
>
> And not Lyndon Johnson, of "Hey hey LBJ how many kids did you kill
> today" fame.
>
>
> These were GOOD bourgeois presidents, or at least less bad ones,
> compared to nasty George Bush II.
>
>
> And, of course, Kennedy is considered a saint, solely on the basis of
> having been assassinated.
>
>
> The contention won't stand the giggle test. Let's be frank, despite all
> the Patriot Act and other things, nothing that has been done in the past
> three years compares in scope or intensity to the McCarthy witch-hunt.
> There's been no Rosenberg execution. They cracked some heads in Miami
> during the FTAA meeting but didn't kill demonstrators like they used to
> in the 1960's and 1970's.
>
>
> What we really have is a hysteria among some leftists, who think things
> depend on the style, inclinations or personalities of specific members
> of the ruling class when in fact they depend a lot more on a whole
> series of other factors which, to tremendously oversimplify matters,
> I'll just call the relationship of class forces.
>
>
> Then there's the charge that Bush stole the elections. I'm shocked, just
> shocked. But back when St. Jack the Good Martyr stole them (and Kennedy
> did) they didn't even let n******* vote in the old confederacy. There
> wasn't a single Black congressman or mayor of any significant city,
> there weren't any governors, schools featured courses with names like
> "Americanism versus communism," and water fountains at the Atlanta
> Greyhound bus station has "white" and "colored" signs on them.
>
>
> The other problem with Jim's argument is that independent politics it is
> ineffective politics. He argues the left is too WEAK to do anything
> else. But granting for argument's sake that it is weak, the question
> would be, how did it get so weak? Doing precisely what he proposes. This
> is precisely what the bulk of those who consider themselves socialists,
> communists or radicals of one sort or another have been doing since Earl
> Browder invented the tactic of running in support of your opponent in
> the 1936 elections.
>
>
> The truth is that from where most working people sit, there really isn't
> that much of a difference between a Bush and a Gore and a Clark and a
> Dean. That's why, election after election, given the opportunity to
> determine nothing less than the fate of the entire human race --or so we
> are told by our mendacious media--, the majority of working people DO
> NOT VOTE.
>
>
> What determines upsets and "big" changes in bourgeois politics is NOT
> who "the people" vote for, but WHICH PEOPLE VOTE. Spend some time
> communing with the exit polls of the last few national elections and
> congressional elections, look up racial composition and income levels of
> districts and states and compare it to what the polls reveal about the
> 35-50% who actually voted nationwide. And then look at things that were
> considered unusual, for example, the Republican failure to pick up many
> seats in Congress in 1998. And if you look at the 20 or 30 most
> contested races, you'll see what made the difference is simply turnout,
> in some cases around 2/3rds of the voters or more in an election that
> overall attracted less than 40% to the polls. Then look at the
> demographics of that turnout, and you'll see it is a lot more working
> class, a lot more union, a lot poorer, a lot less "educated" and a lot
> Blacker than the electorate nationwide.
>
>
> >From that point of view, and quite contrary to conventional wisdom, the
> strategy of backing the "hold your nose and vote" candidate is suicidal.
> Because you have to wind up trying to convince people to vote for a Gore
> or a Dean or a Clark DESPITE the candidate, and what really happens is
> that people simply won't come out for those kinds of candidates, not the
> big majority of working people. Crass as it sounds, they vote pretty
> much out of immediate self-interest and class/national instinct. And I
> don't believe there's a snowball's chance in hell you're going to get a
> massive Black or Latino vote for the likes of Dean, Clark, Kerry or
> Edwards.
>
>
> The argument of voting for someone who you absolutely distrust in order
> to block the one you passionately despise may work with a relative
> handful of ideologically motivated people, but it doesn't work with the
> big majority of working people. That's what six decades plus of
> experience shows.
>
>
> And what is worse, this "realistic" strategy only succeeds in helping to
> shift the political spectrum to the right. On the right, those forces
> are always trying to pull people in their direction. What is being
> proposed is, in effect, that from the left, we push people towards the
> right, instead of trying to pull them to the left.
>
>
> José


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