Re: [Marxism] A clarification on Peronism, Zionism and Socialism

["rrubinelli" <rrubinelli@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I think JB's remarks are well-reasoned and cogently presented.  And also
dead wrong. Let's see if I can be as cogent in rebuttal.

Indeed, JB is almost right when he says I liquidate the  national
struggle into the class struggle.  Except he's wrong.  It's not me. It's
the historical processes themselves, and those processes require not so
much the liquidation, but the supercession of the national struggle into
and by the class struggle.

I have tried to make it clear that what appears as a "national"
struggle, wrapped in the terms of national liberation, national
sovereignty, is in fact a moment, an expression of the deeper conflict
between the means of production, and the relations of capital, the
relations of private property.  The is at heart then a class conflict
and can only be resolved through the triumph of class, not a national,
revolution.

The "national struggle" parallels closely the question of the "bourgeois
democratic revolution" that so occupied the Russian, and other,
Marxists.  Trotsky's great leap forward was to show the real class
configuration and conflict precipitating the appearance of a "democratic
struggle," and how the property relations, the relations of classes,
doomed the bourgeois democratic revolution to failure, to stillbirth,
and the working class with it, if the struggle was not advanced directly
to one for proletarian revolution.

The national revolution appears as a "hangover," an echo of a moment
already eclipsed by the actual class conflicts.

Whatever and why Lenin chose to call his study Imperialism, the real
content of the work is centered around finance capitalism.  Lenin's
study was undertaken and presented as a polemical refutation of
Kautsky's arguments about imperialism.  And Lenin, as is sometimes the
case, is polemically and tactically correct while his own empirical
analyses, and theoretical derivations, are not.

I don't recall Lenin ever referring to a handful of robber (baron)
states and robbed states, but be that as it may, Lenin does make
reference to the development of "rentier" states,  coupon clipping their
wealth from the financial instruments imposed on the imperialized areas.
But that's just no so.  Wasn't so then, ain't so now.  Analysis of
income receipts, terms of trade, and the actual categories of import and
export of goods for that Gangster No. 1 in the imperial world, the US,
puts the truth to the notion of "rentier" states.  They don't exist.

I have some experience with the history and the ongoing revolutionary
struggle in Venezuela.  Not wanting to do too much advertising for
my(other)self, I simply refer to a series of articles on history and
class available at : http://thewolfatthedoor.blogspot.com.

Here and now, the domination, such as it was of Venezuela, was not the
domination of robber baron states looting the country of resources,
natural wealth, etc.  Not ever. Not during the Spanish colonial era.
Not during the century of caudillismo.  Not after.  The petroleum
industry was partially nationalized in the 1930s, completely
nationalized in 1976.   Foreign investment in petroleum was only
reallowed in 1995 and is quite restricted.  The domination experienced
was/is in the domination of capital-- in the expropriation of surplus
value and its realization through the markets for exchange.  It is a
class domination maintained through class relations where the national
bourgeoisie of Venezuela, cowardly, stunted, inadequate as it maybe is
the perfect representative capital, national and international, and is
neither robbed nor has its "entrepreneurial" instincts, abilities,
desires sacrificed to the gods of bigger capital.

The imperialist tutelage, as JB describes it, of Venezuela, referring to
the IMF austerity programs immiserating the general population was in
fact the result of the "nationalist" advance of Venezuelan capitalism
after OPECs 1 and 2, where massive investment and overproduction ran
head on into declining prices caused by the overproduction of oil.
Robbery had exactly nothing to do with it.  Perhaps this is a bitter
pill for those who hope to find some shred of "national pride," some
allegiance to country and people in the more privileged sectors of the
society, but those are the real terms of capital.

JB says to make my case stick I need to :

" For "rr" to make his case stick, he would have to show, not just that
the interests of the exploited classes in Venezuela, the toilers, have
increasingly come to the fore as the revolutionary process has unfolded,
but
that at the same time there has been a turning away from patriotism on
the
part of the leading contingent in the process."

I don't think so.  The current leadership may deploy arguments about
patriotism and sovereignty to provide a cover of bourgeois legitimacy in
the face of threats external and internal.  The question is does such
patriotism and appeals to national sovereignty really provide a path for
advancing the social revolution?   I think for JB's argument to stick he
has to show that the appeals to patriotism and national sovereignty are
turning the Venezuelan bourgeoisie away, as a class, from their dreams
of one more Tachirense caudillo. And that sure ain't happening.

Despite JB's assertions, the "nation" is a historical product, the
result of class forces, and class struggle and has no eternal claim upon
organization of production or prospects for human emancipation.  The
nation is a vehicle, a product, and producer, for the creation and
protection of markets, domestic, and global.

rr

----- Original Message -----
From: "Joaquín Bustelo" <jbustelo@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "'Activists and scholars in Marxist tradition'"
<marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Sunday, April 10, 2005 1:20 AM
Subject: RE: [Marxism] A clarification on Peronism, Zionism and
Socialism


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