Re: Re: reform and revolution (with reference to Argentina 7 New Zealand)

[Michael Perelman <michael@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I got a note today complaining about the formatting of many of the
messages on pen-l, which are difficult to decipher and contain too much
extraneous text.  Could we be more careful in the future?

On Sat, Jan 26, 2002 at 07:35:40PM -0800, Michael Pugliese wrote:
>
>
> >--- Original Message ---
> >From: Battaglia comunista <batcom@xxxxxxxx>
> >To: aut-op-sy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> >Date: 1/26/02 4:25:01 AM
>
> ...
> >
> >> the near-hysterical tone and insults of your latest
> >
> >> reply indicates to me that the contradictions in your
> >
> >> position are really starting to bite.
> >
> >>
> >
> >> The contradiction that strikes me particularly
> >
> >> strongly is the one between your advocacy of working
> >
> >> class struggle, on the one hand, and your efforts to
> >
> >> the remove from this discussion any concrete
> >
> >> references to or suggestions for working class
> >
> >> struggle, on the other hand.
> >
> >>
> >
> >> You talk a lot about class struggle, but when faced
> >
> >> with, for instance, the reality that class struggle
> >
> >> almost always takes place around demands for reforms,
> >
> >> you throw up your hands in horror. Similarly, you
> >
> >> regard class struggle in Argentina as the way forward,
> >
> >> but refuse to face the fact that class struggle in
> >
> >> that country is very obviously being undertaken mostly
> >
> >> by workers who still have a reformist worldview, and
> >
> >> also around various demands for more or less radical
> >
> >> reforms.
> >
> >>
> >
> >> You want to escape the contradiction in your position
> >
> >> and the obvious absurdity of repudiating class
> >
> >> struggle in Argentina in the name of class struggle by
> >
> >> withdrawing from concrete debate about Argentina, and
> >
> >> you try to cover this withdrawal with the suggestion
> >
> >> that people like me who do want to discuss the
> >
> >> situation in that country in detail are guilty of not
> >
> >> discussing Argentina in our own 'communities'.
> >
> >>
> >
> >> This is a strange accusation to make of me, since I
> >
> >> have posted very recently the record of a picket and
> >
> >> public meeting on Argentina held by the AIC in
> >
> >> Auckland. I want to tell you a little bit about this
> >
> >> meeting and about the group that held it in the hope
> >
> >> of pointing up what I see as the absurdity of your
> >
> >> total repudiation of fighting for reforms, work with
> >
> >> reformists, and also work with Leninists.
> >
> >>
> >
> >> At our meeting a couple of short talks were followed
> >
> >> by questions and then informal discussion. One of the
> >
> >> first questions asked came from a man who seemingly
> >
> >> thought that liberation theology and, perhaps, the
> >
> >> Catholic Church were a progressive force in Latin
> >
> >> America.
> >
> >>
> >
> >> The person who had just given the talk argued that
> >
> >> liberation theology was not a genuinely radical strand
> >
> >> in thinking but rather a gesture by the church to
> >
> >> maintain influence over rebellious peasants and
> >
> >> workers. She pointed to the reactionary role that the
> >
> >> Pope had played in Latin American conflicts - for
> >
> >> instance, his refusal to condemn American aggression
> >
> >> in Nicaragua during a visit to the country in the 80s
> >
> >> -as evidence for her point of view. She did emphasise,
> >
> >> though, that the ideology of liberation theology could
> >
> >> be construed as radical by individual priests looking
> >
> >> to justify their association with radical struggles,
> >
> >> in the same way that the ideology of Christianity has
> >
> >> frequently been commandeered for radical purposes
> >
> >> during events like the English revolution and the
> >
> >> colonisation of New Zealand. The person who had asked
> >
> >> the question about liberation theology seemed
> >
> >> interested in this answer - it seemed that his
> >
> >> sympathy for liberation theology had stemmed from an
> >
> >> acquaintance with some radical individual priests,
> >
> >> rather than any devotion to the Catholic Church as
> >
> >> such.
> >
> >>
> >
> >> Another aspect of our recent Argentina solidarity
> >
> >> activities that I'd like to dwell on is the
> >
> >> conversation I had with an Argentinean employee of
> >
> >> Aerolinas Argentinas who came to our solidarity picket
> >
> >> of the US Consulate General. This guy thought of the
> >
> >> crisis in his country in quite nationalistic terms,
> >
> >> and put forward the view that "all of the small
> >
> >> countries, New Zealand, Argentina, should get together
> >
> >> and fight the US, oppose its policies". At the same
> >
> >> time, he expressed his great sympathy for the
> >
> >> anti-capitalist protests in Seattle and Genoa, saying
> >
> >> he was delighted to hear about them.
> >
> >>
> >
> >> What I tried to do, talking to this guy, was
> >
> >> respectfully and gently suggest that there was a
> >
> >> contradiction between some of the politics of the
> >
> >> anti-capitalist movement and the nationalist course he
> >
> >> was advocating, and that nationalism of the Peronists
> >
> >> might even be heavily implicated in the economic chaos
> >
> >> which threatened his future. This person was also a
> >
> >> staunch advocate of reforms like nationalisation of
> >
> >> the banks, but did not seek to give those reforms a
> >
> >> class line did not, for instance, seek
> >
> >> renationalisation of the banks under workers control.
> >
> >>
> >
> >> The third example that I want to give concerns a
> >
> >> member of the AIC, the group that organised the picket
> >
> >> and public meeting. It was after coming into touch
> >
> >> with this man several months ago that I realised
> >
> >> particulalry strongly that I would have to revise my
> >
> >> view that all Leninists were contemptible would-be
> >
> >> bureaucrats.
> >
> >>
> >
> >> The guy in question is eighty-eight years old, and has
> >
> >> been involved in virtually every major social movement
> >
> >> in NZ over the past fifty years. He was one of the
> >
> >> founders of the anti-Vietnam War movement, which began
> >
> >> in Auckland with I think a march of three people. He
> >
> >> was involved in anti-racist rugby tour protests
> >
> >> decades before they became an issue that split and
> >
> >> seriously destabilised the country in 1981. He was
> >
> >> involved in an army mutiny over conditions in 1942. He
> >
> >> did an amazing amount of work for our group, including
> >
> >> standing outside the conference of the governing
> >
> >> Labour Party last year with us and chanting Baby
> >
> >> killers, murderers to shame-faced delegates and cops
> >
> >> afraid to muscle an elderly man. He also happens to be
> >
> >> a Maoist.
> >
> >>
> >
> >> Trying to understand the contradiction between this
> >
> >> mans deeds and some of his views, I was forced to
> >
> >> consider the history of communism in this country.
> >
> >> Alone in the West, the NZ Communist Party sided with
> >
> >> Albania and China in the Sino-Soviet split in the
> >
> >> early 60s. A puppet Moscow party was soon set up to
> >
> >> match the Peking parrots, and it gained a
> >
> >> stranglehold over the trade union movement, advocating
> >
> >> very conservative, economistic, semi-reformist ideas.
> >
> >>
> >
> >> The only opposition to this party, at least until the
> >
> >> emergence of small Trotskyists groups on campus in the
> >
> >> late 60s, was the CP, which adopted a sort of
> >
> >> supermilitant Maoism. There were no organised
> >
> >> autonomist Marxists, or council communists, or
> >
> >> anarchists, or anything else that might be contained
> >
> >> by the term libertarian left. In these
> >
> >> circumstances, I can see how the CP, distorted by
> >
> >> Stalinism though it was, might seem some sort of
> >
> >> radical alternative to reformism. Inevitably, the CP
> >
> >> bred splits in the 70s, and I think the guy I am
> >
> >> speaking of ended up in one of these splits.
> >
> >>
> >
> >> The point I am making is that in each of these
> >
> >> examples we encounter someone holding a
> >
> >> position/engaged in a practice which has good as well
> >
> >> as bad features, and which must be engaged with in a
> >
> >> sophisticated, sympathetic manner. Under your
> >
> >> criteria, each of the people I have mentioned would be
> >
> >> rejected out of hand. The first person would be a
> >
> >> symapthiser of a hierachical institution, pushing
> >
> >> alien class ideas, who should be exposed as bourgeois.
> >
> >> The second person would be condemned as an enemy of
> >
> >> class struggle, despite the fact that he had been
> >
> >> engaged in the most whitehot class struggle in the
> >
> >> world at the moment. The third person you would class
> >
> >> as bourgeois, compare to a fascist, and seek to
> >
> >> expose inside protest movements. In the name of
> >
> >> class struggle, you would repudiate a person
> >
> >> sympathetic to class struggle, a person engaged in
> >
> >> class struggle as we speak, and a person who has been
> >
> >> involved in class struggle for longer proabably than
> >
> >> your parents have been alive.
> >
> >>
> >
> >> If your position does not allow you to have comradely
> >
> >> feelings towards these people, and leads you to
> >
> >> condemn and abuse me as some sort of traitor, then I
> >
> >> wonder you expect to be able to do the 'community
> >
> >> outreach' work on Argentina you advocate. How are you
> >
> >> going to deal with what may be by and large the most
> >
> >> reactionary population in the world? If reformists,
> >
> >> Maoists and fellow autopsy list members like me are
> >
> >> too heretical, how will Joe Blow from Idaho, who
> >
> >> thinks everyone has a fair deal in America and thinks
> >
> >> President Bush had no option but to attack
> >
> >> Afghanistan, fare? How will any member of the American
> >
> >> working class who is brave enought to strike or
> >
> >> protest for a reform in the present atmosphere fare?
> >
> >>
> >
> >> Surely your latest coments are digging you into a
> >
> >> ultra-leftist and incredibly sectarian hole, a hole
> >
> >> which you will have to climb out of to engage in any
> >
> >> sort of practical political activity?
> >
> >>
> >
> >> Cheers
> >
> >> Scott
> >
> >>
> >
> >>
> >
> >>
> >
> >>
> >
> >>
> >
> >>
> >
> >>
> >
> >>
> >
> >>
> >
> >>
> >
> >> =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D
> >
> >> For "a ruthless criticism of every existing idea":
> >
> >> THR@LL, NZ's class struggle anarchist paper http://www.freespeech.org/th=
> >rall/
> >
> >> THIRD EYE, a Kiwi lib left project, at http://www.geocities.com/the_thir=
> >d_eye_website/
> >
> >> and 'REVOLUTION' magazine, a Frankfurt-Christchurch production,
> http://c=
> >antua.canterbury.ac.nz/%7
> >Ejho32/
> >
> >>
>

--
Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA 95929

Tel. 530-898-5321
E-Mail michael@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx