Re: [Marxism] On Cubaphilia

[Courtney Smith <cleighs@xxxxxxxxx>]

"Representation" is a slippery slope.  The whole problem with
socialism-from-above formulations is that they assume, for example with
welfare states, that if a bourgeois government can act *on behalf* of the
"people," whoever that is, it is somehow just as good or preferable or more
"realistic" than if people represent their own interests.  Or if the state
owns the main utilities it's somehow equivalent or close enough to workers
actually have a say in how things are run.  One point I think the parecon
(participatory economics, anarchisty Z Magazine) people are right about is
that a genuinely participatory society would be very difficult to maintain.
Just look at how staid and corrupted union officials and how these bizarro
dynastic enterprises of Hoffas and others has developed.  THIS is why we
aren't liberals.  We know that anything we take from the ruling class they
will try to take back, such as access to abortion and other things that were
won but have since been constantly chipped away at.  There is this need for
constant renewal.  People in the U.S. have this sense that democracy is
something they possess, that they were given and which exists no matter
what, NOT that it is something that must be worked at, like playing a
musical instrument or staying physically fit.  It's one way in which Marxist
ideas make a lot of sense- workers can struggle for their own self-interest
and rather than derailing everything, the way the stock market gamblers and
financial industry have, the class interest of about 70% of people (in the
US) is on the biggest questions roughly the same and it's always possible
some of the middle class will take the right side.   But struggling is hard
and not winning sucks!

The romanticization of guerrillas (note that I'm NOT asserting that Joaquin
or Sebe hold such an idea, just sort of letting my train of thought wander a
bit) is something that was really a huge part of the radical activist
culture of the 1960s and 1970s in the U.S. and is still with us - any time
we see a Che shirt.  Maoist and third worldist ideas really inspired lots of
often white and often middle class people on college campuses and elsewhere
to believe that someone would engage in truly successful struggle even
though they thought and continually reasserted that the workers in the
industrialized nations were "bought off" and actually had a stake in
maintaining the subjugation of the so called "Third" World to the "First"
one.   In the context of an endless imperial war, lots of social struggle
and perhaps not as much in the way of results, it's not an altogether
unreasonable way of reconciling why we didn't see a revolution in the
1960s.  In the end, however, the guerrilla fetish is still something of an
incarnation of the kinds of hopes many people put in politicians or leaders
of any other type - obviously in a very different context and for different
reasons than feeling just powerless and isolated as an atomized citizen of
the empire.  If you spend 5 years as an organized Marxist and maybe 5 months
as an unorganized one, it's very difficult to keep the faith.  It would
certainly be easier if Obama did everything for us or a Dr. King or someone
else.  This is not to say that leadership is not needed, but that if we had
Jesse Jackson style Rainbow Coalition leadership, when the leader stopped,
the coalition would collapse.

Eugene V. Debs' quote expresses this idea perfectly: "I am not a labor
leader. I don't want you to follow me or anyone else. If you are looking for
a Moses to lead you out of the capitalist wilderness you will stay right
where you are. I would not lead you into this promised land if I could,
because *if I could lead you in, someone else could lead you out*."

While professional revolutionaries and guerrillas are inspiring (and to be
greatly admired for their commitment and devotion), I think we ought to look
more to how they make people believe things can change, rather than allowing
them to stand as a substitution for the will of the working class.   We
should try to see how they change the political equation in the area of
consciousness.  Similar to how it's actually potentially a really great
thing that a layer of Obama get-out-the-voters partook in organizing, went
door-to-door and got interested and inspired to be involved in politics.
While this won't get us far on its own, it creates an opening that people
raise their expectations and have truly put their heart into the idea that
the U.S. will stop going in what most people feel is "the wrong direction".
Rather than feeling that the right-wing-nut balls are hurtling us toward a
terribly bleak future, people were allowed by the empty "change" rhetoric to
really believe that it can happen.  Some are deeply committed to continuing
to be involved in politics.  Many people will make excuses for Obama, many
will become disillusioned with politics or with the dead end of the
Democratic Party (and perhaps radicalize), and there has to be a group of
people who really believed in what they thought and believed Obama said he
would do and are committed to the ideas, the need to turn the country around
and not to the Obama brand.

I hope this comparison doesn't offend people.  I'm certainly not saying that
people who admire guerrilla revolutionaries are like Obamamaniacs, but I
think it's a socio-political phenomenon that we can see around us and learn
from.  We're all human.  It's not a sin to be moved by someone's
achievements, to emulate what a group of people did for their country or the
world.


in response to:

From: Joaquin Bustelo <jbustelo@xxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: [Marxism] On Walter and Cubaphilia
To: sebatomic@xxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Sunday, January 25, 2009, 7:17
>Courtney Smith pontificates: "Guerrillas do not a workers' revolution
>or a
>workers' state make.  Period....

OK.  But where do guerillas come from and whom do they represent?

sebe
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