Re: A Question for the Moderator

[Carrol Cox <cbcox@xxxxxxxxx>]

Ulhas Joglekar wrote:
>
> Michael Perelman,
>
> Some posters on this list have expressed their support
> for the breakup of Russia, India, Iran, Iraq, Syria
> and Turkey. I would like know what is your personal
> opinion in this matter.
>

It is a (sort of) interesting _academic_ pursuit for leftists in the
comre imperial nations (Western Europe, UK, US, Japan) to discuss what
sort of precise policy "should be" (were we able to dictate
implementation as well as general principle) followed by our
governments. It is even of similar interest for us to discuss what
policies "should be" followed by other governments or by resistance
movements in other nations. Such discussion and/or explorations can
(perhaps) expand our understanding of the overall social reality of the
world today. BUT we should understand that our opinions on such detailed
questions are toothless, that the discussion can NOT be directly (or
even indirectly) relevant to our theory and practice as leftists in a
given nation (the U.S. say).

Our aims, of course, are to affect U.S. actions and policy. But we have
to understand what the scope and limits of the change which popular
pressure can bring to bear on government. (I will eventually get back to
the particular question posed by Ulhas, but I want to first establish
what I think is a reasonable context in which to answer it and many
similar questions.)

Let's take a particular instance. Many leftists since the criminal u.s.
assault on the people of Iraq have suggested that "we" (and the content
of "we" is always ambiguous) should support a UN replacement of the U.S.
in Iraq. Such a proposal is (to be kind) an alice-in-wonderland
proposal. Even if it were possible to  marshall significant public
pressure behind such a policy, the best (and this is nearly
hallucinatory) that could be accomplished would be for the u.s.
government to declare such as its official position. But here
_everything_ that counts lies in the day-to-day particularities of
implementation. As an academic proposal, there is no doubt but what the
best thing for Iraq would be for a "true" UN (independent of the U.S.)
to administer Iraq for a brief period before giving power to a
provisional government backed by public opinion in Iraq.

But anyone who proposes this as a popular demand just simply isn't
living in the real world. (I think journalists are rather more apt to
make this academic mistake than are academics themselves. Academics
after all have to deal with _real_ audiences -- their students --
continuously, and hence can at least develop a realistic understanding
of what does and what does not influence the opinions of actual people.
Journalists can live in a dreamworld forever -- though that dream world
can be lethal, as in the case of Bernard Fall in Vietnam. He was a
marvellous journalist, perhaps one of the 20th century's best, and his
reports from Vietnam were quite splendid. But when he occasionally
allowed himself to speculate on "what should be done," he was no better
than any Harvard professor.)

What popular movements _can_ do is create tremendous pressure on
government to relieve the pressure by doing _something_ that will remove
or soften whatever it is in the world that generates the pressure. (Had
the UAW supported the organizing efforts of foremen back in the late
'40s -- to the point of a new round of sitdown strikes and illegal
secondary boycotts -- that would have very possibly brought about the
repeal of the Taft-Hartley law (without any lobbying or wanking or
complex argufying at all on the need for its repeal).

When there is enough pressure on the U.S. government (in the form of
growing militancy behind the Demand of Out Now, no Conditions), it may
well be that the U.S. government _will_ use a U.N. presence as a
face-saving measure behind u.s. retreating (the U.N. being good
camouflage for the tail between the legs). There are some interesting
complexities here in respect to the various simultaneous routes to
mobilizing the needed pressure, but those can only be worked out in
day-to-day discussion and wrangle within the 1001 different
local/regional/national coalitions against the war. The success of
William and Hillary in crushing the nascent movement for national
healthcare by diverting it into endless wankery and journalistic
navel-gazing is characteristic of what happens to mass movements when
they are diverted into debates over detailed policy.

Now to come back to the question posed by Ulhas: Some posters on this
list have expressed their support for the breakup of Russia, India,
Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey.

Is that a good idea. Personally (merely personally) I hate to see
breakups anyplace outside the U.S.; they expose the areas concerned to
more manipulation and control from imperialist powers. So to that extent
I agree with Michael's own answer, and of course I agree that it would
be nice to have a socialist world.

But in respect to opinions in the U.S. which might make a difference in
all these areas, I think Michael is wrong in saying there is no simple
answer, and I think my discussion above on Iraq bears directly on this.

The simple answer which must govern all left activism (and theory) in
the U.S. is U.S. OUT OF EVERYWHERE.

The route to making this happen to some extent is a massive build-up of
a (at least potentially) socially destablizing movement demanding U.S.
Out of Iraq Now!

Carrol