Re: [OPE-L] Taking Debate Seriously: A Response to M. Junaid Alam

[Gerald_A_Levy@xxxxxxx]

I discovered 5 typos -- the corrections are CAPITALIZED below.
1 & 3 are significant.

In solidarity, Jerry


1. > Isn't it _far_ more  often the case that the military is a
> _reactionary_  social institution  and that its ranks -- _especially_ the
>  military OFFICERS -- are composed of  right-wingers?

2. > Alam recognizes that the coup in Venezuela was
> defeated, in part,  by "leftist military elements" but he does not go
> on to ask the obvious question regarding the extent to which
> Chavez's "approach" can be generalized in other nations -- where
> else are "LEFTIST military elements" so strong that they have
> prevented a coup from being successful?

3. > ii)   Hasn't Chavez's challenge to US imperialism and struggle for
> economic self-determination been at least _partially_ related to
> the fact that Venezuela is an IMPORTANT oil-producing and oil-
> exporting nation?

4. > Indeed,
> I would go so far as to suggest that an implied principle of
> AUTONOMIST Marxists and anarchists is that _all_ models -- and
> other expressions of authoritarianism -- should be rejected;
> we should not let our thought be imprisoned by "models" drawn
> from the past or specific social formations.

5. > While he mentions that a "good thing" was the USSR helping
> to defeat Nazism, he doesn't mention some rather important
> historical details such as the Stalin-Hitler pact,  the fact that
> Stalin  opposed the war until the day that the Nazis invaded
> the USSR, and that Stalin ignored military intelligence about
> that ATTACK and botched the defense of the Soviet Republic
> (in many ways, which I will not catalog here).