Re: [OPE-L] response to John Holloway

[glevy@xxxxxxxxx]

> I find that in a face-to-face exchange, it is more difficult to
> waffle and avoid answering questions. [...]
> I hope you have been more responsive to specifics in the
> answer to my critique in Historical Materialism.

Michael L,

Well ... since you want John not  to "waffle" and to  not "avoid
answering questions" and  to "be more responsive to specifics" ...
perhaps you could answer _his_ questions below  being careful to
be responsive to specifics?

In solidarity, Jerry

[...]
My question is how this form of organisation affects the development of
the struggle. Has it, for example, had the effect of diverting
anti-capitalist struggle into the form of anti-imperialism, a form quite
compatible with the continuation of exploitation and private ownership? I
do not know, I ask.

You say, in effect (and translating you into my terms) that the state
has been trying to overcome its separation from society, to dissolve
itself as a state and convert itself into a form of communal or council
organisation. Is that what you're saying, is that really what's happening?
And if that is what you're saying, can it really work? Is
it possible for a state to dissolve itself into a radically different
form of organisation, or will the established practices both of state
functionaries and of the people themselves, and the integration of the
state into the global multiplicity of states and above all the global
movement of capital, not make that impossible? I ask.

Has the Venezuelan state managed to liberate itself from the need to
secure the profitability of capital? And if it has not broken from that
need, does that mean that it necessarily promote the exploitation of
labour? And if it has broken the need to secure profitability, this
presumably can only be on the basis of the creation of an anti-capitalist
form of social organisation. Is this what's happening?  [...]