[Marxism] Re: the battle of the adjectives

[DLVinvest@xxxxxx]

In a message dated 3/27/04 8:09:54 AM Mountain Daylight Time,
ffeldman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx writes:
> Since the 1992 military revolt, the Militant has continually labelled
> Chavez a "bonapartist demagogue" without ever making a serious attempt
> to prove it (as the SWP did in the past when it labelled McCarthy or
> Father Coughlin incipient fascists, or as Marx did re Louis Bonaparte,
> or Trotsky in reference to Von Papen and Schleicher in Germany).

having never been a Trotsyite or -ist, I have spared myself many of the
doctrinal disputes within that tendency, but if memory serves, it was in his 
essay
on the 18 Brumaire of Louis Napoleon that Marx offered his witticism that
history indeed repeats itself, in fact twice as it were, "the first time as
tragedy, the second, as farce." Too often, the debates about that history 
degenerate
into something less entertaining.

The von Papen/Schliecher putschists who paved the way for Hitler were
alternate brands of fascists or aspiring fascists, looking to represent and put
themselves at the head of that peculiar blend of racism, anti-semitism, 
nationalism
embodied in Nazi ideology; they were not mere "bonapartists" who represented
a "national bourgeoisie" allied with rich peasants, as the napoleonic
description suggested. Whether Coughlin or McCarthy were fascists, incipient or 
no, is
now a historical curiosity; we might learn more from Leibling's journalistic
profile of Huey Long in understanding the current role of the US military in
international class warfare than what Palme Dutt or Dimitrov had to say about
it in the 1930s.

It's as if attaching an "-ism" to any historical phenomenon can strip it of
its particular attributes and universalize it as a formula to be applied in
different circumstances, as a cursory look at socialist-inspired revolutionary
struggles in the "third" world reveals, especially in Latin America since the
1950s; some examples:

In Peru in the early 70s, the SWP (PST led by Hugo Blanco) and the
forerunners of the Sendero Luminoso (remember it's inspiration -- homegrown 
Carlos
Mariategui in the 1920s, not just Mao as is often thought) both denounced the
Velasco regime as either bonapartist or fascist, respectively, and organized 
armed
insurrection in the countryside with some success, only to succumb to superior
military force -- and terror. In Panama, some factions (SWP or PST led by
Miguel Antonio Bernal) described the military-dominated regimes of Torrijos and
Noriega as "bonapartist" with some degree of accuracy (in fact, most Panamanian
officers had been trained in Peru under the supposedly "progressive"
Velasco), but this formula ignored the degree of support those regimes had 
developed
among workingclass organizations, farmers and the poor, largely as a result of
organizing by the Popular Party (pro-Soviet, pro-Cuban, "revisionist"). The PP
largely dissolved itself into truncated "mass" organizations and the
military-inspired, self-styled "social-democratic" Revolutionary Democratic 
Party
(PRD, 2nd International) which survived the overthrow of Noriega and is running
Martin Torrijos for President in the current elections. These experiences,
coupled with the collapse of the revolutionary guerrilla movements in Salvador 
and
Nicaragua, have been closely studied in Venezuela and Colombia, with very
different conclusions drawn in strategy by the "left" based on their own
histories.

There is an  obviously strong military current in Castro's version of
guerrilla war doctrine, based on the July 26 Movement's policy of building 
alliances
between largely pesant-based military force and urban workers, that has given
rise to the proposition that the military in less-developed counties can be a
revolutionary nationalist force  -- or even a substitute for stunted
working-class organization in neo-colonial/dependent-capitalist modes of 
production
that prevail there. See debates in Latin America Perspectives in the 70s and 80s
for an attempt to put a Marxian political-economic foundation under this
practice (or strategy masquerading as "theory"). One widely distributed text was
Nils Castro's Como Pez en Agua (Like Fish in the Sea) which described the
Panamanian military as the revolutionary vanguard. -- what some revolutionary
marxists consider a deviation, others consider a creative contribution to 
theory and
strategy. You might want to take a look at materials published by various
left formations in Salvador, Nicaragua, Colombia and now Venezuela, where this 
is
getting played out in a new form. Demagogue Chavez may be; "bonapartist" will
have to be proved, probably in how he walks the tightrope he has strung
between the huge mass of poor people and the military milieu from which he 
emerged.
Colombia's civil war, on the other hand, has continued for 55 years with only
a few interruptions of truces and cease-fires when the military dictatorship
and the left-led guerrilla armies have faced the reality of mutual exhaustion
and political impasse.

The old labels are sometimes useful in summarizing investigation into such
phenomena, but more often act as a substitute for marshalling the evidence and
making the argument that would support the political conclusion (usually a
condemnation in the form of an adjective) they imply. In the US, however, any 
such
rigorous analysis and study should be accompanied by the unwavering demand
that all US military intervention and support for the dominant regimes end
immediately.

Douglas L. Vaughan, Jr.
Investigations
for Print, Film & Electronic Media
3140 W. 32nd Ave.
Denver CO 80211
303-455-9429
_______________________________________________
Marxism mailing list
Marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism