Re: Re: Angel of History (was Re: Geras vs Laclau)

[Michael Pugliese <debsian@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

   Re: Joe Slovo>
http://www.sacp.org.za/people/slovo/default.htm
http://www.sacp.org.za/docs/history/failed.html
Has Socialism Failed?
By Joe Slovo
South African Communist Party


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Contents
Introduction
Ideological Responses
Marxist Theory Under Fire
Socialism and Democracy
Socialist Economic Alienation
A Look at Ourselves


Michael Pugliese

----- Original Message -----
From: "Louis Proyect" <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>
To: <pen-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Thursday, June 21, 2001 7:42 AM
>Subject: [PEN-L:13740] Re: Angel of History (was Re: Geras vs Laclau)


> > Lou complains of
> >reformism of the SACP, the Mexican CP, FARC, & a host of other
> >outfits in the periphery, but in this they are merely following the
> >trend that happened much, much earlier in the core.
>
> I must demur. The trend in question was the Comintern of the Popular Front
> era which promoted Kautskyism in Africa and Latin America. The CP backed a
> populist candidate in Colombia in the 1940s who was the victim of
rightwing
> terror. To the FARC's credit, it has fought courageously to defend the
> peasantry but the theoretical outlook is boilerplate "stagism". You can
say
> the same thing about the SACP. They supplied the cadre of the Umkhonto we
> Sizwe, while intellectuals like Joe Slovo were made of the right stuff.
> However, that being said, we are dealing with a serious theoretical
> problem, namely "stagism". The relevance of this to the Brenner thesis is
> that it reinforced Kautskyism in the third world, no matter the intentions
> of Brenner himself. Generally speaking, the reaction against the MR school
> was rightward. It expressed itself in various forms, from Bill Warren's
> open apologetics for imperialism, to Althusserian 'articulation of modes
of
> production' which in the pages of scholar John Taylor retrogresses into
the
> outlook of the Latin American CPs when he complains about "the resistance
> put up against imperialist penetration by the non-capitalist mode of
> production." (From Modernization to Modes of Production: A Critique of the
> Sociologies of Development and Underdevelopment, Macmillan, 1979). I am
> reminded of the scandal provoked by TV weatherman Tex Antoine in the 1970s
> when he told his audience that if a woman is being raped, she might as
well
> relax, lie back and enjoy it.
>
> Louis Proyect
> Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org
>