[PEN-L:36088] Re: Re: Re: Open Letter to Ellen Willis

["k hanly" <khanly@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

It is my understanding as well that some fundamentalist groups provide the
main social safety net in many countries.



Cheers, Ken Hanly
----- Original Message -----
From: "Louis Proyect" <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>
To: <pen-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Tuesday, March 25, 2003 9:44 AM
Subject: [PEN-L:36085] Re: Re: Open Letter to Ellen Willis


> andie nachgeborenen wrote:
> > respectful, and (if reliable) possibly even useful. It is certainly true
> > that Islamic fundamentalism is a far more important force than many of
> > us suspected. It's also true that it's wholly reactionary and
retrograde.
>
> No, it is not wholly reactionary. Hizbollah drove the Zionists out of
> Lebanon. The Islamic rebels in the Philippines are defending the class
> interests of oppressed peasants, albeit imperfectly. While not exactly
> fundamentalist, the party in power in Turkey has been an important
> factor in forestalling the US war drive. Islam is no different from any
> other religion. Even in its fundamentalist aspects, English
> Protestantism had revolutionary impulses. Read Christopher Hill for more
> on this.
>
> > Is it mad or bad to say that Islamic fundamentalism represents a very
> > serious and very dangerous challenge to the kinds of
> > Enlightenment ideals shared to a greater or lesser extent by "Western"
> > liberals and radicals?
>
> Only insofar as it is not the kind of sharp surgical instrument that is
> needed to overthrow capitalism, but you can this about liberalism as well.
>
> > It's a challenge of a different type than that
> > posed by facism or Stalinism, which at least aspired, it that is the
> > word, to impose their special conceptions of the social order on all of
> > humanity, and at various points looked to some (both enemies and
> > supporters) be within hollering distance of having the popular support
> > and/or economic and military power to do it.
>
> I have no idea what "conceptions of the social order" is supposed to
> mean. Fascism defended capitalism, while Stalinism defended socialist
> property relations in a bureaucratic fashion in much the same manner as
> Jimmy Hoffa defended closed shops.
>
> >  Obvious that does not warrant war, this crusade, etc. But to say that
> > doesn't mean we (and I mean here real liberals and the left and the
> > populations of the industrialized nations, not our rulers) aren't facing
> > a real threat. To relate this back to Berman: he says he's worked
> > through Qutb in translation. That's not a bad thing. He migh even have
> > something interesting and useful to say about Qutb and Islamic
> > fundamentalism. At the very least this is something about which we have
> > to learn more and understand better.
>
> Frankly, I think it is a waste of time--as I pointed out in my review of
> Tariq Ali's otherwise excellent book "The Clash of Fundamentalisms"--for
> Marxism to crusade against any religion. The Russian Orthodox Church was
> just as much a beacon of backwardness as the kind of Islam that Berman
> rails against, but Lenin advised:
>
> "But under no circumstances ought we to fall into the error of posing
> the religious question in an abstract, idealistic fashion, as an
> 'intellectual' question unconnected with the class struggle, as is not
> infrequently done by the radical-democrats from among the bourgeoisie.
> It would be stupid to think that, in a society based on the endless
> oppression and coarsening of the worker masses, religious prejudices
> could be dispelled by purely propaganda methods. It would be bourgeois
> narrow-mindedness to forget that the yoke of religion that weighs upon
> mankind is merely a product and reflection of the economic yoke within
> society. No number of pamphlets and no amount of preaching can enlighten
> the proletariat, if it is not enlightened by its own struggle against
> the dark forces of capitalism. Unity in this really revolutionary
> struggle of the oppressed class for the creation of a paradise on earth
> is more important to us than unity of proletarian opinion on paradise in
> heaven.
>
> "That is the reason why we do not and should not set forth our atheism
> in our Programme; that is why we do not and should not prohibit
> proletarians who still retain vestiges of their old prejudices from
> associating themselves with our Party. We shall always preach the
> scientific world-outlook, and it is essential for us to combat the
> inconsistency of various 'Christians'. But that does not mean in the
> least that the religious question ought to be advanced to first place,
> where it does not belong at all; nor does it mean that we should allow
> the forces of the really revolutionary economic and political struggle
> to be split up on account of third-rate opinions or senseless ideas,
> rapidly losing all political importance, rapidly being swept out as
> rubbish by the very course of economic development."
>
> full: http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1905/dec/03.htm
>
>
>
> --
>
> The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org
>