Re: [Marxism] what is Antiwar.com?: Louis's comments on a Militant article

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

Steve Gabosch wrote:
> "vanguardism" in this post, I have read others which have.  My take on the
> reasoning behind your responses in your 6/11/04 post goes something like
> this:  a vanguardist (Leninist, or perhaps, Cannonist) group like the SWP
> comes up with absurd or "silly" political positions because its whole
> strategy for building a revolutionary vanguard party is essentially flawed.

Not really. As I pointed out, I have heard the same basic analysis from 
Chip Berlet who has written for Z Magazine and other 
non-Cannonist/non-Leninist venues.

> Steve:
> The term “exposé” is put in quotes because the Militant denies the claim
> that a neo-conservative Jewish (or pro-Likud party) conspiracy in the
> Defense Department manipulated the US into going to war in Iraq.

The problem is that everybody else in the entire world views Seymour 
Hersch's article as an exposé of torture at Abu Ghraib--not an analysis 
of how neo-Conservatives conspired to start the war against Iraq. To 
somebody with a hammer in their hand, everything starts looking like a 
nail...


> So far, no evidence has been advanced in this thread on Marxmail that
> demonstrates that this neo-conservative conspiracy theory is true. 

This is because nobody believes that it is true. As Jose pointed out, 
there is a gusano factor in USA politics that helps to shore up 
subversion and blockade against Cuba. We have something similar at work 
with respect to Israel. This is not a "conspiracy". It is just politics.

>  It takes coherent statements about related conspiracy theories finding
> resonance within certain groups, and distorts them into incoherent and
> "silly" (a la Monty Python) statements about leftist publications finding
> resonance in rightist circles.

Well, really the key point is this. The Militant regards the antiwar 
movement as objectively supporting enemies of the working class so it 
will do everything in its power to tarnish those who organize to oppose 
it. If you think about the logic of the coverage on Iraq, the people 
fighting in Fallujah are "Baathist remants" occupy a place on the 
political spectrum not far from the Nicaraguan contras. They condemn 
Iraqis fighting to rid the country of occupiers. All this is done, of 
course, with a heavy layer of ultraleft rhetoric. The business about 
anti-Semitism and conspiracy theories is just another excuse for 
reactionary inaction.

> I have been studying Ilyenkov's 1960 _The Dialectics of the Abstract
> and Concrete in Marx's Capital_, a terrific book about the Marxist 
> method of
> ascending from the abstract to the concrete, the method of dialectical
> materialism.

I think you'd be better off reading something by Tariq Ali or Hanna 
Batatu, but do whatever makes you happy.


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