Re: Putin

[Waistline2@xxxxxxx]

In a message dated 6/23/2004 11:28:54 AM Central Standard Time, sartesian@xxxxxxxxxxxxx writes:

Those Marxists who may or may not endorse a particular "national liberation" struggle are not: 1. made Marxists or non-Marxists by their endorsement  2. relieved from correctly characterizing the "leaders" of such a struggle  3.released from providing the linkage, economic, material, class, between that particular struggle and the prospects for revolution.

 

Comment

 

I would add to this the need to ascertain class forces and by this what is meant is the material composition of the population: one part industrial workers, service workers, peasants or small family farmers, medium and large size property holders.

 

Then there is a need to examine the real economic context of the world market in the time frame one is dealing with. The national question in Russia was most certainly reconfigured by the 1920s and somewhat different from the "national question" in 1850. What is different is the economic basis of its resolution. The national question from say 1920 to the victory of the liberation forces in Vietnam represents in my thinking another historical juncture.

 

In my way of thinking we are no longer taking about a land question as such in today''s world - post industrial society.

 

I would be oh so delighted to have an opportunity to know what and how Chechnya Marxists - communist, see the current situation since the collapse of Soviet power and the victory of the counter revolution and private property relations.

 

The October Revolution was a juncture in political history and put an end to the old national movements as class less movement for liberation. The emergence of the political polarity called Soviet Power meant winning the economically backwards areas over to political alignment against bourgeois imperialism on the basis of the antagonism that was Soviet Power and World Imperialism.

 

One no longer simply spoke of national movements but rather national colonial movement as the result of the re-division of the world by great imperial powers as the material result of the First Imperial World War. The Second World Imperialist war saw the sweeping away of the last vestiges of feudal social relations as concrete forms of the political superstructure relations throughout Europe - more than less, and this underlying economic logic governs the Marxist approach to the national colonial question.

 

How the Marxist approach to the national and national colonial question was applied by the Soviet State does not mean we should not think things out in the context of today.

 

The question is not support for Putin or against Putin or support of the Russian State or opposition to the Russian State in respects to the Chechnyans. At least for me.

 

On the one hand I unconditionally demand the withdrawal of US troops everywhere on earth as an abstract principle and as practical policy on June 23, 2004. On the other hand I have had enough of the Jesse Jackson Sr.s of the world - who express and represent a class and class fragment and their strivings.

 

Don't get things twisted . . . Big Jesse was more than less cool in a certain historical period. Damn near 40 years after the assassination of Dr. King and dramatic changes in the composition of the world means at least trying to look at economic logic and political relations based on our own time frame and not Leninism.

 

As a communist worker and Marxist I have nothing for Big Jesse. In my practical life I am always compelled to compromise with how people understand their urgent problems.

 

To compare the plight of the Palestinians in 2004 with that of the Chechens in 1850s denies the profound twist and turns of history. Is Chechnya comparable to Iraq today? Iraq was never an autonomous region of the British State of the state of the American Union.

 

Of course not. And all of history proves this.

 

Is Chechnya comparable to the struggle of the Palestinian against Israeli fascism?

 

Of course not. And all of history proves this.

 

Does this means one supports Putin or the Russian State for that matter?

 

Of course not.

 

In 2004 I am very comfortable with the demand and view advocating Soviet Power in the former states that constituted the USSR. This is general enough as a political equation and specific enough as an indication of ideological commitment to be on the correct side of the historical progression - as I understand it.

 

The idea that the people of Chechnya in their relations with the state of Russia is similar to that of the people of Iraq to the US invaders is monstrous. The idea that the people of Chechnya in their relations with the state of Russia is similar to that of the people of "Palestine" to the Israeli fascists is monstrous.

 

I call abstract concepts of self determination the lingering ideological outlook of the student movement and its concepts of participatory democracy.

 

Where is the voice of the proletariat of Chechnya on this matter? I am not interested in the Jesse Jackson's of Chechnya or the George Bushes of Russia - although this is not a very good analogy.

 

That Chechnya is argued on Pen-L without an economic content or attempt to talk about modern economics and economic centers of gravity is a waste of time.

 

 

Melvin P.