PEN-L message, Re: Chronology of Russian-Chechen relations -- part two

In a message dated 6/27/2004 9:54:39 AM Central Standard Time, sartesian@xxxxxxxxxxxxx writes:

Brother Melvin begins the process of properly framing the critical questions. We have a condition of economic, social deconstruction, devolution, where the centrifugal forces part and parcel of interrupted, confined Russian Revolution, overwhelm the entire social fabric.

Banditry, financial and/or armed, are results. I don't think that calling for "national self-determination" begins to address that real driving forces -- not in Chechnya, Afghanistan (pre Taliban, post Taliban), Iraq, Angola etc.

It would have been more accurate for me to state that the national question emerges in history as a peasant question not simply because of the transformation of wealth in general - land to movable property, but the conversion of land into capital.

Part of the problem is that the entire discussion is devoid of any economics or economic formulations and based on a very personal and abstract belief in one's own understanding of the meaning of "National self determination."

"National self determination" is the calling card of bourgeois property and one hundred years of attempted workers revolutions and horrible defeats prove this. This does not mean that communists should have not compromised with the economically backward masses in their economic and political striving . . . we compromise everyday with our own workers for Christ sake.

We never turn a blind eye to economic logic and Marx approach to social revolution. Let us see what happens in Chechnya . . . and I am sure beyond doubt you already know that the inevitable consolidation of both bourgeois regimes is taking place and no one other than maniac in Chechnya, have any desire to leave the economic center of gravity that is Russia and the Russian State.

Putin is driven by economic and geopolitical considerations and the leaders of Chechnya fully understand which side of their bread is buttered and who is doing the buttering. The whole matter of Balkanization over the past decade are treated by some as if these our national movements. These are flat out counterrevolutionary bourgeois movements, instigated and brought to life by imperialism and imperial intrusion.

Its like heads I win, tails you lose and watching the God father. There are no good guys in the class sense.

When the head and stomach enters into a fight the stomach has the last say. Noble ideology only in rare history making events . . . over power the stomach.

We shall see what happens in the next decade or so.

Melvin P.