[Marxism] The one soul of socialism

["M. Junaid Alam" <alam1@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

This discussion has been totally derailed and we have lost perspective
on the issue at hand - Holloway's anarchist variant of Marxism has been
slaughtered by history. The fad of Zapitista fetishism, the all too
casual and breezy ritualistic denunciations of the Soviet socialism as
an inevitable outcome of "authoritarianism", the genuflection of the
post-modernists before the consciously "non-heirarchal", ie.
disorganized, global justice movement, and the global justice movement
itself, are all dust to ash, and ash to dust. Holloway's politics rode
on the same crest which brought us Fukuyama: demoralization post-USSR.
With the rise of the Bolivarian movement, the stubborn reality of the
viability and, moreover, the desirability of socialism, of socialism
with elected leaders, has washed out the debris and hubris about the
"impossibility of socialism" touted by the Right, or the "impossibility
of socialism unless every person on the planet votes on whether a leader
can take a piss or else it will result in Stalinism" touted by the
unthinking Left.

The socialism of today is guided by the same spirit as the socialism of
yesterday. The difference, as always, lies in the balance of
international forces and the material conditions. The stamp of stupidity
the Holloway faction brandishes its on forehead on this question is so
bloody obvious that it beggars belief: in order to dismiss Venezuela's
socialist progress, it points to the high prices of oil and that
country's abundance of it as the main reason improvement is taking
place. But since this view admits the role of material conditions in the
outcome of a socialist program, it also deflates the argument that the
USSR failed because of authoritarianism and not the material conditions
which made authoritarianism bloom. Moreover, according to this argument,
Saudia Arabia should be the world's most socialist country on the face
of the earth. QED.

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