Re: [Marxism] With bailout, socialists say Bush is now "a fellow traveler"

[Aaron Aarons <aaron@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>Date: Wed, 8 Oct 2008 19:13:24 -0400 (EDT)
>From: Walter Lippmann <walterlx@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>
>Will wonders and ironies never cease?
>
>Some people sneer at Venezuela's president Hugo Chavez, who was elected 
>democratically and who is in the process of carrying through a profound 
>revolution in the political, social and cultural life of his country. He 
>doesn't use any of the recipes which have been presented to him from one or 
>another source. And we cannot predict how much he will succeed in the future. 
>But crystal balls aren't 100% accurate in any event, as historical experience 
>has shown.

I will dare to predict that there will be a violent dénoument in Venezuela that 
will result, hopefully, in the smashing of the power of the capitalists through 
the establishment of the proletarian dictatorship, or, failing that, the bloody 
suppression of the politically conscious and active elements of the plebian 
majority and their middle-class allies.

>We can learn something from the Bolivarian leader, in terms of communicating 
>with our own people, and with the people of the United States, who are being 
>rocked and rolled -rather more the latter than the former- as we watch TV to 
>see our savings, retirements and economic system failing to respond to the 
>manipulations of the governments around the world.
>
>In addition, we can also learn something from the Bolivian leader, Evo 
>Morales, as well as the Bolivarian leader, but we have to be able to be open 
>to learning from them, and not insisting on imposing pre-conceived notions 
>regarding the only permissible way to bring about socialism today.

It has nothing to do with what is "permissible", but what is possible. And it 
is impossible to bring about socialism without smashing the capitalist state 
and expropriating the bourgeoisie.

And, yes, we can learn from people like Chavez and Morales, but lets hope we 
don't learn the same lesson we learned from Allende. More to the point, let's 
hope that the proletarians of Venezuela and Bolivia learn how to go beyond the 
limitations of these leading personalities.

>The hostility which some on the political left are aiming toward Chavez and 
>Evo Morales flows from the (unstated) idea that there's something not quite 
>cricket, not quite legal, and not quite kosher about the fact that they won 
>democratic elections. Bourgeois. Capitalist. Parliamentary. Elections.

No, it's quite "cricket", "legal", and "kosher" (why not "halal"?) that they 
won bourgeois-democratic elections. It was also "cricket", "legal", and 
"kosher" that Felipe Carrillo Puerto and Salvador Allende, among others, won 
bourgeois-democratic elections. The problem is not with winning such elections, 
but with spreading the illusion that winning them is more than a tactical 
victory at best and a deadly trap at worst.

>This is simply not the prescribed path through which socialism is required to 
>pass, at least according to some with what I've called a "perfectionistic" way 
>of approaching these matters.
>
>Revolutions are "supposed" to go through soviets. They are "supposed" to be 
>lead by a Leninist-Vanguard Political Party. They are "supposed" to prioritize 
>the formal nationalization of private industry, first of all and above all.

Not "formal nationalization" but expropriation.

>And, of course, they're "supposed" to smash the existing state structures and 
>create an entirely new one, more or less from scratch, and do do so right 
>away, right? These are the "norms" and anything at variance with the norm is, 
>of course, a "deviation".

As an earlier perfectionist wrote almost 140 years ago, "The working-class 
cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made State machinery and wield it for its 
own purposes."

>But what if these revolutions don't do what they're "supposed" to do, then 
>what? This is the part which eloquent formularizers like the World Socialist 
>Web Site, and all of the others with political prescription pads, just can't 
>get conceptually past. They are the perfectionists, but they're not the only 
>ones.

So what if these "revolutions" leave economic power, and major portions of the 
state apparatus, in the hands of the capitalist class! If they can use oil and 
gas revenues to back up their socialist rhetoric with populist reforms, only 
sectarians will refuse to call them "socialist".  Instead, such sectarians will 
point out how at least one of the enthusiastic admirers of these populist 
"revolutions" uses demagogic and dishonest arguments, putting words (in 
quotation marks!) into the mouths of his synthesized opponents, to ward off 
criticism.

>Walter Lippmann
>Los Angeles, California

 - Aaron

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