Re: [Marxism] US reveals its efforts to topple Mugabe

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

Walter Lippmann wrote:
> Yesterday there was a great deal of spirited debate about Zimbabwe
> in various forums on the Internet. Here in the virtual world, there
> is a veritable marketplace of ideas. It's like a gigantic class-
> room. Every opinion is equal, right?

I would see it more in terms of this:

"If we have no business with the construction of the future or with 
organizing it for all time, there can still be no doubt about the 
task confronting us at present: the _ruthless criticism of the 
existing order_, ruthless in that it will shrink neither from its own 
discoveries, nor from conflict with the powers that be."

Karl Marx, Letter to Ruge, 1843

> Would it seem unreasonable, in light of this, to hope that, maybe
> those who've been so vociferous, so strident against Mugabe, some
> even doing to in the name of Marxism, will stop for a moment and
> meditate over what has now been made public by the U.S.?

So therefore Trotsky was wrong in the 1930s to denounce Stalin's crimes.

Walter's descent into a kind of crypto-Stalinism is a bit like farce 
following tragedy. At least in the 1930s, CP'ers were defending a 
socialist country, even if ineptly so. Today, Walter and other people 
who think like him have diminished expectations. Stalin 
industrialized the USSR, while Mugabe tears down the huts of 
squatters. Talk about lowering the bar.


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