[Marxism] Petras' criticism of Fidel

["Mike Friedman" <mikedf@xxxxxxxx>]

> Message: 12
> Date: Sat, 12 Jul 2008 06:37:12 EDT
> From: Jscotlive@xxxxxxx
> Subject: [Marxism] Petras' criticism of Fidel
> To: marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Message-ID: <bbb.302598a8.35a9e358@xxxxxxx>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="ISO-8859-1"
>

It invalidates their struggle 1) in the eyes of the ones who need to be
the protagonists of that struggle. At best it is what we would call
"substitutionist." At worst... And 2) it leads to a question: if they have
substituted a military strategy for a mass mobilizing strategy (i.e.,
substituting military for politics with no effort to exercise leadership
in popular struggles), and they merely seek to pressure the government
with no aim to take power (as do reformists and the Zapatistas), and they
resort to actions that are or are popularly seen as kidnapping and
extortion, and, finally, at the very least their tactics are condemned by
those who should be their base and allies, then are they a revolutionary
organization? When I worked in Barricada, I once asked an Argentine
journalist who worked for that paper and went under the name Leonel Urbano
and had been in the guerrilla movement in Argentina, if he didn't think
Sendero Luminoso -- then being decimated by Fujimori -- deserved our
solidarity. His reply was terse: "to be a revolutionary organization you
have to act like you want to win power."


> But how does this invalidate their cause or struggle, as Joaquin and now
> you, it seems, assert? Because a struggle has reached a stalemate, it
> doesn't
> follow that the struggle in of itself is illegitimate or lacks
> justification.
> The objective factors in favour of revolution in Colombia and the  taking
> of
> power clearly do not exist. But the FARC's attempts to gain the  release
> of
> political prisoners is a laudable one nonetheless.
>
> This passage from Joaquin clearly, in my view, substantiates my original
> post and his apportioning blame to the FARC for the US role in Colombia.
>



________________________________________________
YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
Send list submissions to: Marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Set your options at: 
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40archives.econ.utah.edu