[PEN-L:9646] Minnesota Nuts

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

>Worse than that, he popped off that if there had been
>an armed security guard, the tragedy could have been
>averted.  Of course, there was an armed guard.
>
>mbs

Alexander Cockburn lavishes praise on Ventura in his latest column, seen
everywhere, for defending the right to own guns. It is the usual backwoods
spiel that we have gotten accustomed to, with one slightly sinister note:
he refers positively to a South African schoolteacher who keeps a gun in
his desk and who states that he has no compunctions about using it against
unruly students.

That's the big problem with Cockburn, he sees the whole issue in terms of
individual rights rather than in class terms. In his inexorable slide
toward libertarianism, the question of state domination in itself becomes
THE issue. So this allows him to make common cause with the NRA et al.

>From a Marxist standpoint, the issue really is one of the right of the
citizenry to own guns on a class basis, to defend their class interests.
The problem, however, is that this discussion has an abstract character
because the average worker seems more interested in trading securities on
the Internet rather than forming militias to defend strikes like they did
in the 1930s.

Louis Proyect

(http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)