RE: [Marxism] Mass populace

["Nestor Gorojovsky" <nestorgoro@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Respuesta a: RE: [Marxism] Mass populace
Remitido por: Zivko Vukolaj
Fecha: Jueves 6 de Enero de 2005 
Hora: 9:49
*****

> The poverty caused by sancations and war, and hyper-inflation before
> them, affected the nation as a whole, and this is precisely what I
> meant by the term 'mass populace'. This included everyone, but in
> particular the toiling masses who eventually decided that bread was
> better then pride. The ethics of the situation is not something that I
> have intention to discuss here. What I have in mind are mere facts.
> 
> Yours,
> Zivko V.
> 

a)   Facts _are_ values, values _are_ facts.  "Mere facts" don't 
exist unless "the ethics of the situation" is understood as an 
integral and essential parcel of the "mere facts", and viceversa. No 
"Activist and scholar in the Marxist tradition" can split the realm 
of "facts" from the realm of "values".  What's more: in actual, 
concrete, history, both "realms" are a single one, the realm of 
political and practical action to revolutionize -or to preserve- the 
current situation.

b) It would be interesting to perform a geographical analysis of the 
votes during the era in question, so as to realize what did the 
"toiling masses" feel, think, or believe.  And what did the upper 
layers of the society feel, think, or believe.

c) Allow me to make an analogy with a situation I grasp quite better, 
before I make a final comment.

After the 1989 election, the Peronist candidate Carlos Menem became 
President of Argentina with a vaguely but recognizably patriotic 
programme, against César Angeloz, the candidate of the still ruling 
party, whose programme had been drafted by the neoliberal gang around 
Domingo Felipe Cavallo.

By the time of that election, Argentina had suffered the criminal 
regime of the neoliberal military Juntas between 1976 and 1983; lost 
a central battle against an imperialist coalition (1982);  witnessed 
with Alfonsín (President, 1983-1989) the scandal of a petty 
bourgeois, lame and in the end "pro-imperialist constitutional" 
regime seeing to it that the great structural changes established 
after the 1976 coup would be left unchanged.  

In 1988-89, we also saw how, when this guy and his void democratism 
proved unnecessary for the establishment (that is, he showed himself 
unable to stop the tide of pro-Peronist vote for the 1989 elections), 
the country was forced to live through not one but _two_ most severe 
hyperinflations (1988-1989).  The first one, against Alfonsín, the 
second one against the elected President, Menem, who was thus forced 
to become President before the legal term, with his team still 
unorganized and under the direct pressure of the revolted 
stablishment.  

Menem, in a post-electoral fraud of enormous proportions, threw the 
historic programme of Peronism to the sharks, and sternly directed 
Argentina towards full scale capitulation, economic destruction and 
self-annihilation as a sovereign country.  After a couple of mid-way-
house attempts, Menem decided to install as economic dictator the 
same Domingo Felipe Cavallo who had drafted the programme of  
Angeloz.

The single word that describes this is "betrayal".  However, as 
Shakespeare already noted, when a traitor wins, the traitor is not a 
traitor any more, because nobody dares to call him or her "traitor" 
any more.  Weary after this set of unprecedented and unstopping 
calamities, the Argentine population caved in.  So much so that, 
during the 1995 elections, and facing the evident fact that the 
opposition to Menem (the Radical party of Alfonsín, etc.) would not 
offer anything better than him, he was _reelected_.

One would thus make Zivko's conclusion a _must_. And, in fact, this 
is what the mainstream "left" did in Argentina.  Not to speak of the 
members of the Radical party, who were all snakes and toads against 
these brutal Peronists ("Ah, you see, Menem _is_ Peronism, these 
beasts will simply vote him because of that", etc., etc.).  And this 
was most noteworthy in the "progressive" members of the Radical 
party.

At the same time, however, the Peronist labor movement presented 
battle.  Though a fraction sided with Menem, another fraction kept 
struggling against him and the workers' union eventually split.  It 
is usually forgotten that Menem suffered more general strikes than 
any other President, all of them great and succesful.  It is usually 
forgotten that even those who had voted for him in 1995 were shy to 
admit this vote ("How did he win if I did not vote for him, and 
nobody else admits to have voted for him?" was the most popular pun 
after the elections).  

It is usually forgotten that in the 1995 elections the "toiling 
masses" had not been offered an actually _better_ option than Menem, 
because the Radical party -whose sad performance was still very fresh 
in people's mind- did not propose to attack his "feats" of 
denationalization, destruction of the State, etc.  They only stressed 
that "all this, which was good and necessary, could have been done in 
a more proper way".  This "proper way" (smaller bribes, or no bribes 
at all, etc.) might have been in the interest of the imperialists who 
took over our country (collateral damage to their purses would have 
been smaller under such conditions), but not to Argentina or the 
Argentinians as a whole.  In the end, the corrupt sepoy (or Quisling) 
is less harmful, because corruption puts a strong question mark on 
her or him, than the impolute tribune who sells the country away to 
foreign companies.

And, mind you, Menem was still a Peronist.  Even though one can 
consider Peronism a rotten corpse, it is still a corpse, there is 
something looking like flesh in it, while the Radical option is 
already a full whitened skeleton.  This is another, seldom commented, 
reason, for mass support of Peronism in Argentina, both in 1995 and 
today.

Of course, with all this forgotten, the final conclusion is that 
everybody was _with_ Menem, which is essentially false.  When the 
occasion came, the 2001 mobilizations demonstrated who was with whom. 
 But the "we all were Menemists" line serves imperialism and the 
establishment very well.  Because it tends to generate a feeling of 
"national guilt", thus blaming the victim for the deeds of the 
rapist.  And leaving the essential lines of national destruction in 
hiding, so to say, lurking beneath a dark sense of national "guilt" 
which is particularly expressed of the toiling masses, a sense which 
allows the actual political crimes to evade their responsibility.

d) I have a strong feeling that Zivko's way of describing the 
Yugoslav situation by the times of the massive bombings (and, now I 
can feel more at ease in saying this, after his reply, the way in 
which he used the terms "mass populace") tends to fit in with this 
particularly destructive way to see "facts", "mere facts".  It is a 
value-charged vision.  This fact I would not blame him for, because I 
am fully conscious that even when one decides to choose _which_ facts 
to look for one is already making an ideological and valorative 
option.  But I would like to stress that -if my assumptions are 
right, and they well may be wrong- he is not fully conscious of them 
or cannot express them in full.

Néstor Miguel Gorojovsky
nestorgoro@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 
"Sí, una sola debe ser la patria de los sudamericanos".
Simón Bolívar al gobierno secesionista y disgregador de 
Buenos Aires, 1822
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 



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