Re: [Marxism] Dalai Lama seems desperate for negotiations with Beijing. Beijing should be desperate but probably isn't.

["Fred Feldman" <ffeldman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Greg says the Dalai Lama "represents the reactionary feudal Tibetan
landlords."

Since this class has been expropriated and driven out of the country fifty
years ago, there is no class of "reactionary feudal Tibetan landlords" for
the Dalai Lama to represent, nor do I see him centering his demands on
restoration of landlord power. Does the Dalai Lama represent a threat of
restored FEUDALISM, something which has never taken place in any country
where feudalism has been overturned any where in the world -- not matter how
the job was done or by whom.

So people should stop refighting the civil war of 1958 -- where I supported
China and its Tibetan allies against the Dalai Lama  -- and start looking at
the Tibetan nation that has arisen out of the national revolution that
occurred then (far-left critics of the former Tibetan regime, which was
feudal and pre-national, tend to forget that the overturn the Chinese regime
directed actually created the real social basis for a Tibetan nation for the
first time. What is taking place now is not a movement for feudalism, but a
popular response to the system of national, including religious, oppression
that has been instituted by the Chinese regime since that time.  The Dalai
Lama keeps himself in business by presenting himself as the leader of this,
not by leading a struggle to recreate a feudalism that is gone forever.

The Chinese should be negotiating with the Dalai Lama, whose authority is
recognized among far more than a coterie of aging ex-feudal landlords, and
also with local leaders to gain a real base for the regime among the
indigenous Tibetans, and not trying to marginalize them by burying them in a
sea of Han immigration.

Otherwise I guarantee you that this border region will become much more
dangerous to China, not to mention the opportunities being handed to
anti-China forces who have significant imperialist backing to launch
boycotts of the Olympics and other attacks on China which we should all
oppose.

Self-determination is not always the highest consideration, but the Chinese
government has refused to take it into serious consideration for more than
50 years.  Carrying on about a defunct system of feudalism does not change
the fact that not only ignoring but attempting to simply pave over Tibet's
national rights by imposing a new population on the region-country-nation is
going to end up as a genuine disaster for China if it is not reversed.

Negotiating with the Dalai Lama is part of the way out of a trap that is
slowly but surely closing around China.
Fred Feldman


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