PEN-L message, Re: Marxist Fianancial Advice

In a message dated 6/26/2004 12:17:19 PM Central Standard Time, sartesian@xxxxxxxxxxxxx writes:

The struggle for "national liberation" did not arise in the past 150 years
separate and apart from critical moments in the conflict between the means and relations of production, and consequently the notion of "oppressed peoples" is put forward at the moment as "people" is archaic, is transforming itself into class.

This does not mean that we do not defend resistance struggles because organizations involved are not communist. It does mean that we do identify the driving forces, provide a concrete analysis, and not subjugate a "radical" Marxists analysis to blanket terms, umbrellas of national liberation which obscure the class differentiation, and struggle, at the heart of the resistance.

Marxists finaical advice as distinct from financial advice from a Marxist is interesting. First things first.

My insistence that the doctrine of Leninism is obsolete does not meaning throwing out Lenin's method or approach to concrete political phenomenon. The above is my basic position and one should look at the world in which they like and act. Iraq most certainly is not a national liberation struggle. whcih refers to a political category of history that no longer exists.

The division of the world amongst imperial powers and the redivision and redivision of the redivsion long ago overrode the period of history Lenin and the communists and socialist of his time called the national movement. To accomodate this change in the economic and political relations of the world communist began to speak of the national-colonial movements because an era of history emerged - after the First Imperial War, where no one could really speak of a national movement that was not a question of the fight against the direct colonial system.

The slogan of that era was Workers and Oppressed Peoples Unite. This would seem rather clear to anyone that studied the program of the Russian communists and their impact in the Third International.

In other words national movement belong to a period of history during an era of transition from agricultural relations to bourgeois commodity production during a period of transition from manufacture to industry, when various peoples are undergoing economic transition and the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeois are fighting to establish their "national market" and state to protect their economic independence from more powerful states.

The period of the national colonial revolts by definition indicates that the previous era of national movements had resulted in the defeat of lesser economjcally developed peoples and nations. Consquently those defeated are drawn into the orbit of the direct colonial system (in the main because development in the Western Hemisphere was somewhat different) and the national question became a question of colonialism at the hands of bourgeois property.

In the second period of the reformulation of the national question the political polarity that was Soviet Power and bourgeois imperialism existed and in theory the more than less petty bourgeois masses could be won over to an alliance with Soviets as a political strategy to weaken imperialism by fighting for its economic and political reserves - sources of manpower and raw materialism.

In this sense Lenin spoke of communists not imposing their/our ideology, doctrine and program on the petty bourgeois colonial masses. At the same time our common sense training as communists taught us that their can be no such thing as inpendence from imperialism without the overthrown of domestic capital as a property relations interlocked with world bnourgeois property.

The national colonial question further evolved in the post Second World Imperial war era and proved conclusively that it is an act of political insanity or rather bourgeois logic to speak of independence from imperialism without flat out proletarian revolution and all the talk about the Third World and Third Way has revealed itself to be no more than the striving of petty capitalist seeking their place in the sun.

This period of the national colonial revolts came to an end in terms of the political and economic logic of the American Union with the 1965 Watts Rebellion and then 1967 Detroit which began a material separation of the black workers from their own bourgeoisie. On the world stage the victory of the Vietnamese revolution is probably a recognizable juncture for revolutionaries world wide.

The treachery of the Soviet leaders is not the issue but rather the political meaning of self determination which lost it real political importance as a weapon of the proletariat as the material results of the First Imperial World War. Workers and Oppressed People of the World Unite is a class formulation that subordinates self determination to Workers as a class alignment.

In this current era of the domiantion and composition of financial capital it is a serious mistake to talk about self determination of nations and people when what faces us is a different class alignment on earth. The world proletariat faces world bourgeois property. The Palestine masses are not peasants but out of work proletarians.

Is not clear that the Iraqi masses are in a resistence struggle anaginst world capital and its domestic flunkies? The strategic goal of our militant imperialist is not oil but the preservation of bourgeois property and in the Middle East the defeat of the proletatain revolution in all the regimes of the Middle East.

We simply cannot pretend that our world is the world of Lenin and Lenin was political and read class alignments and did what made sense to win for the class forces and political group(s) he came to represent.

Oppressed people does not mean today what it meant one hundred years ago because the fundamental economic units of society - class, has changed. The oppressed people are more than less an oppressed class on a planetary basis.

Financial advice is personal in my opinion and Pen-L is not a party collection or institution. I am an old "Party Man" and one would be quickly booted out of the party for offering Marxist financial advice or inquiring into the financial matters of individuals.

In the group I was in this was a "no no" of extreme importance. In fact I was purged in 1984 for trying to such the unit to demand that my former wife not pressure me concerning child support payments between 1982 and 1984 when I was out of work.

I basically stated that tax returns would prove I surrendered all property, made agreements to pay every dime I owned - now that I was back to work; took the children during all the summer months and that the children was going to stay with me. I was wrong because this is not a party matter.

The moral of the story is that the children came to live with me and I am owed between 15,000 and 20,000 in child support that I have never claimed because I made money. I was purged because I was wrong and a party organization does not give financial advice other than "prepare to lead the workers at every quantitative juncture in the boundary of capital." The party organization advice is "Victory to the workers in their current struggle."

I have loaned comrades money and personally never have an expectation to be paid bad. These are profoundly personal matters. Then Pen-L is a forum for individuals that may or may not be Marxists.

I give financial advice based on my experience. Stay out of the Casino's unless you can really afford them. Go long and hope the proletarian revolution is not short. That is the contradiction.

Individuals can escape a class position but not a class.

The dog food or rather cat food question came up. Well, I will be getting fed in jail before going the way of dog food although I go through period when I do not eat much of anything. As an individual I hardly think about my personal plight because I will be moving in with the moderator is sh*t gets that bad.

Investing is not understood in my opinion - in the class sense of the working class. Investing is to steal the money of the working class as a class. Investing is not abstract things about guaranteeing the living conditions of a class.

On the one hand I agree that Marxist financial advice is absurd and even more absurd if one states they are not a Marxist and then give Marxist financial advice.

On the other hand Pen-L is a collection of individuals and I would love to hear who has the plan for salvation.

Going long makes sense to me but I go short - straight to the lottery store. I get a pension and hope it is intact for at least seven more years, because I thought I would get at least ten years under bourgeois property.

Investing has devastated our working class as a class - not as a collection of individuals.

We are not going to be pushed to the level of the peasants of India of one hundred years ago for a complex of reasons called consumption and reproduction. Then the mass consciousness of people and their expectation is a material force, even in the absence of social consciousness, not to mention class consciousness.

One does not have to be Marxist to be a revolutionary against bourgeois property.

Marxist financial advice is always victory to the proletariat in their current struggle. The individual advice of people that are self proclaimed Marxists is another matter. My personal record of investing is the market is horrible, which places me alongside of about the absolute majority of working people in the American Union.

Everyone wants to save their individual ass and this impulse is not going to go away. Jail is always a real option for me because a person can get three hots and a cot, or write that next great best seller or produce a million seller CD or hit the number - lottery.

One can of course invest their savings in the next Enron.

Political ideology never jibs with the real world.

Melvin P.