Re: [Marxism] Camejo and Shawki/ISO and so it goes...

["M. Junaid Alam" <mjunaidalam@xxxxxxxxxx>]

"It's not an unimportant point.  If you propagate the idea that every effort 
workers
have made to build socialism has collapsed into state capitalism,  you are 
saying that
history teaches us that every effort the working class has made to lead itself 
has reverted
to capitalism.  From there, it's not a big leap to the question, "Why bother?""

I think there are a number of issues here to be disentangled. First of all, you 
can't decide
the importance of any question, or your answer to any question, based on 
whatever
other conclusion it may or may not lead to, absent other arguments and 
contexts. So if you
oppose state-capitalism theory, you should oppose the thing on the empirical 
and analytical
grounds and the strength of your own counter-argument, not the idea that, 
"well,if people
believe this, then they'll believe that, which may lead to this other thing" - 
because
obviously the state-cap people, who are in the ISO, aren't exactly asking "why 
bother."
That's the whole point here. They are asking the same questions we are asking, 
politically,
in terms of what is to be done and how is it to be done in the US, very little 
of which,
quite frankly, is informed by state-cap theory.

The other problem, even if we assume for a moment the validity of your A leads 
to B leads to
C logic holds for, perhaps, non-ISOers interested in joining the ISO, 
conclusion C can be
drawn regardless of whether you adhere to state-cap. Soviet
Marxism is dead, full stop. Every socialist revolution _has_ been defeated, and 
we _do_ have
a full-scale, worldwide restoration of capitalism _today_, excepting Cuba and 
NK, neither of
which are models or guides for American socialism. I think it was Wallerstein 
who said capitalism
has defeated three major oppositional movements in the 20th century: fascism, 
communism, and
social-democracy. So whoever is going to come to the conclusion that 
'resistance is futile'
can arrive it at from a hundred different paths, not just that of state-cap.

Moreover we well know that the worldwide conquest by capital has not resulted 
in utopia. So
just because the system is widespread, I don't see how that translates into 
serious people
assuming that that means opposing it is hopeless. The more established it is, 
the clearer
it can be seen that it does not fulfill the promises offered by its rhetoric. 
Paul Baran said
something rather profound about this, specifically in relation to the 
predominance of capitalism
in America and the lack of a promising force ready to overturn it; namely, that 
if a man is struck
by a debilitating disease, the fact that we have not yet come up with a cure 
does not make that
disease any better or desirable - it only makes finding the cure more urgent.



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