RE: [Marxism] Michael Moore, Wesley Clark and Jose Perez (yet again)

["Fred Feldman" <ffeldman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I am glad that Jose took the point about the growing prison population
and the fact that one-third of Blacks are expected to spend some time
in jail.  This and the growing, not declining in spite of Bush's
basically liberal immigration reform proposals, policing of the border
against the immigrants, and the continuing raids.

Right now, there are still several hundred people in US prisons whose
identities no one outside of government is allowed to know.  This kind
of thing did NOT happen even in the McCarthy period.

There is the concentration camp in Guantanamo.

And there are the raids and prosecutions of Arabs.  While this is
hardly on the scale yet of what happened to the Japanese, it is the
first such attack on a nationality of immigrant origin that I can
remember since World War II.

Most of the machinery of repression that was created during the Truman
witch-hunt still exists, including laws and so forth -- largely but
not entirely in abeyance.

REPRESSION AND, EVEN MORE, REPRESSIVE LAWS HAVE BEEN ON THE RISE.  The
importance of the fact that the organized left has not been a prime
target as under McCarthyism should not be given exaggerated
importance.  As Jose points out, that may not be where they expect the
main threat to come from when it does come.

The radicalization and struggles of the 1960s pushed back the
repressive machinery that had built up without, of course, destroying
any of it.  The antiwar movement and the left won quite a few
victories over this, and built up some public opinion, general social
consciousness and case law on its side that has still not been
completely rolled back.
The rulers have not been able to decisively roll this back.  That is
another reason why the left is not a top open target even for fascists
or fascist types.  Buchanan's fire was on the immigrants.  Others are
firing away on the Arabs.  Some far-out groups still push fanatical
anti-Black racism.  Few of them talk about commies under the bed. This
is not at the top of their worries.

I don't think that people who smell fascism in what is taking place
are simply responding to the routine scare tactics of the Democrats.
This talk didn't just begin, but started as soon as the administration
began to respond to the 9/11 events with war moves, repressive
legislation, more aggressive nationalist messianism, anti-Arab lie
propaganda, and for-us-or-against-us swagger on the world scene.

Many people respond to this with ideas that stem from a political
tradition -- the Stalinist one -- that has, in my opinion, a very
deeply flawed conception of fascism that makes it pretty much
identical to the right wing of bourgeois politics regardless of
season.  But they are not wrong to smell something very vicious,
dangerous, racist, chauvinist, and totalitarian going on.

They see it as beginning with Bush -- the Democrats help them fall
into that trap -- when in fact Bush, with full ruling-class support,
has escalated a process of starting to strengthen the repressive and
war making machinery and retaking the ground lost in the 60s and 70s.
That process began clearly about 1979 under  the Carter administration
and dominated Carter's last two years in office.  This reactionary
drive has escalated under every administration ever since -- eminently
including the Clinton administration.  But there is no mistaking that
it was sharply escalated in the first three years of the Bush
administration, although he now seems to be losing some momentum.

I think it is important to see the process of totalitarianization of
the state, which is built into the contention of the states of the
great monopolies for world domination, and the convergence of the two
big capitalist parties on a single basic course at home and abroad as
rather sharp constrictions of democracy and pointing toward much more,
including the rise of state-backed fascist forces when the economy
cracks or the war on terrorism hits a rock or the system runs into
deep crisis in other ways.

We should not tell people who pick up an odor of fascism when Ashcroft
or Cheney or some of these other types shoot their mouths off in
certain ways, that they are hallucinating. They aren't, although they
may not have been listening when some of the Democratic administration
figures spoke similarly. We should point out what this represents
today, why it emerges, and what can be done to roll back or defeat
this bipartisan march toward deeper reaction and more terrible wars.

So I think it is important in countering lesser-evilism not to respond
by trivializing the reactionary and regressive character of what has
taken place under Bush and also his predecessors.

As for Joe Callahan's point, I think the Avocado statement (leaving
aside here an assessment of Camejo's overall political approach and
strategy), offered a course for a fight to keep the Green Party out of
the two party trap this year, which I think -- if it can be
accomplished -- will be very positive for the labor movement and for
the antiwar fight.  The fight is worthwhile anyway.  Yes, the Green
Party -- like much of the left -- has an ambiguous approach to the
Democrats as  the historic "lesser evil" party.  But I think Camejo
raised a challenge to this and that this is a progressive step that
should be supported. Beyond that, there will be nothing significant
even from a propaganda standpoint (and an independent Green Party
campaign is basically propaganda)  in the field of politics
challenging the capitalist parties, in my view.  So I certainly wish
Camejo's challenge well.
Fred Feldman


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