Re: [Marxist Debate] On process, strategy, and other matters

[Waist...@aol.com]

 

I am not a social democrat. Period.

And deeply apologize if I gave anyone that impression.

 

To each his own.

 

WL.

---

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[Julio Huato]

On Feb 16, 7:27 pm, WL wrote:

> I am not a social democrat. Period.
> And deeply apologize if I gave anyone that impression.

Honest questions regarding movements that, ostensibly, took the high road in their streategy:

Was the right stance re. -- say -- Lenin-Kautsky debate material to Dr. King's struggle and the advancement of civil rights in the U.S. in the 1960s?  Was it material to Nelson Mandela's struggle and the end of Apartheid?

Was the "high road" a hindrance that made these struggles more costly in human terms or was it the key to their intensely committed mass appeal and eventual (partial) success?  Would a "tougher" and "meaner" Fidel or Chávez or Morales or Correa stand a chance in today's Latin America?

What conclusions can we draw for the U.S. today?

I ask these questions well aware of the fact that -- without the Soviet Union, Eastern European communism, Cuba, and Vietnam in the background -- the partial successes of the civil rights struggle would have been much more costly; just like the end of Apartheid would have been without Cuba's decisive internationalist intervention in Angola and overall support of SWAPO and ANC -- Cuba's own high road made possible by the existence of the Soviet Union.

[CEJ]

> I ask these questions well aware of the fact that -- without the Soviet
> Union, Eastern European communism, Cuba, and Vietnam in the background --
> the partial successes of the civil rights struggle would have been much more
> costly; just like the end of Apartheid would have been without Cuba's
> decisive internationalist intervention in Angola and overall support of
> SWAPO and ANC -- Cuba's own high road made possible by the existence of the
> Soviet Union.

Now we have to face another reality. Think about how resilient and
even radicalized the Iraqi Resistance has been without a superpower or
at least great power supporting them. Surely some of the US occupation
plan was to outlast them. Maybe they have, or maybe the Resistance has
disengaged to quite an extent from armed resistance in order to
prepare for the end game (or further armed resistance if and/or when
the US military fails to leave Iraq).

The US left has gone down the rat hole of history over sterile debates
transplanted from the Soviet Union and China (as well as an inability
to deal with Zionism and with the illusionary appeal of social causes
without socialism).

Is it too awful for us to contemplate the idea that a Sunni Fallujahn
or a Sadrist firing an RPG on an M-1 tank, even though he knows his
neighborhood will then be raized, is closer to the radical, to the
revolutionary than any of us will ever know?

[S. Artesian]

What is this?  High road vs. low road?  Tougher harder vs. kindler gentler?  What has any of this do with the actual reality of the struggles, with its social content, and the class forces that a Morales, or an Allende, or a Mbeki represent?

 

Which Lenin-Kautsky debate are you referring to? 

 

But the bottom and top line is, Julio, you are conflating, collapsing actually, the origins of social movement with its temporary leaders-- and thus disallowing development, and regression, in those movements themselves.

 

Fidel is one thing, and that one thing was was actually many things, armed struggle, the fleeing from the field of imperialism's man in Havana, the expropriation of the local bourgeoisie, and the support from the Soviet Union.

 

Chavez is something else.  And Morales is something else again:  no armed struggle, no class perspective, commitment to maintaining the form but adjusting modestly the content of capitalist rule, that is to say-- private property with a "human," i.e. nationalized face.

 

And Correa?  Come on.  This guy turns the military and the police against CONAIE and the indigenous people who happen to protest his awarding of the natural resource lottery to Canada, and you're calling that the high road? 

 

Too much, really too much.  If this is "marxist debate,"  I'm not interested.

 

And South Africa?  The results are exactly as Botha hoped.  If you can't see that in the ANC, if you couldn't see that in the ANC in the 80s, then you weren't blind, you were deliberately not looking.

 

It's not Lenin vs. Kautsky you're proposing we debate:  it's Bernstein vs. Rosa.  And the Rose has already given us the answer, and the place to dance.

----- Original Message -----

From: Julio Huato

To: Marxist Debate

Sent: Tuesday, February 17, 2009 8:14 AM

Subject: [Marxist Debate] On process, strategy, and other matters

[Marvin Gandall]

Artesian writes:

What is this?
=================================
I must admit to also being confused about the references to social
democracy.

The historic divide between social democrats and Marxists was over whether
there could be a peaceful road to socialism through the electoral system -
that is, whether the unions and their allies could elect enough
parliamentarians who would then proceed to nationalize the commanding
heights of the economy. This position originated from within the German and
British labour movements, who had won the franchise and were using it to
form their own parties, elect their own representatives, and win reforms
within capitalism which they confidently believed would gradually "grow
into"
socialism.

The Marxists (and anarchists) said the bourgeoisie, as with any ruling
class, would not peacefully relinquish their power and property.

They had history on their side, and nothing I have seen suggests it can be
otherwise.

However, there are no longer any Marxist parties which are engaging in armed
struggle to seize state power. CEJ has pointed out that it is the Islamists
who are now the only ones fighting arms in hand for their objectives -
national independence, and the formation of of Islamic rather than socialist
republics.

Whether the long historic decline of Marxist parties with this perspective
is primarily due to the corresponding (and wholly unanticipated) expansion
of capitalism since these debates first erupted in the Second International,
or to a failure of leadership and program, is something those who define
themselves within this tradition have been wrestling with ever since.

These tensions reassert themselves with every appearance of an
anticapitalist political movement - the most recent notable example being
Venezuela.

[Julio Huato]

On Tue, Feb 17, 2009 at 5:26 AM, S. Artesian <sart...@earthlink.net> wrote:

> What is this? High road vs. low road? Tougher harder vs. kindler gentler?
> What has any of this do with the actual reality of the struggles, with its
> social content, and the class forces that a Morales, or an Allende, or a
> Mbeki represent?
>
> Which Lenin-Kautsky debate are you referring to?
>
> But the bottom and top line is, Julio, you are conflating, collapsing
> actually, the origins of social movement with its temporary leaders-- and
> thus disallowing development, and regression, in those movements themselves.

No, no. You are conflating things, David. What I refer to in the
post that got your blood boiling is not which conditions exist in
society at large, conditions that individuals cannot choose, but can
only deal with. I am referring precisely to what individual
revolutionaries (or "revolutionists," as you call them), or small
groups thereof, are in a position to choose -- namely their strategic
approach.

And yes, within the confines imposed by those conditions, there's some
room for revolutionaries to choose whether they follow the suit of the
reaction or turn the tables over. If not, we wouldn't be having this
argument.

> Fidel is one thing, and that one thing was was actually many things, armed
> struggle, the fleeing from the field of imperialism's man in Havana, the
> expropriation of the local bourgeoisie, and the support from the Soviet
> Union.

As people from that generation of Cubans (including Fidel and Raúl)
describe it, the resource to armed struggle in Cuba ca. 1953 was a
choice imposed by the closing off of more civil approaches to rescuing
the Cuban nation from its condition as a U.S. neo-colony, cesspool of
prevarication and corruption, etc. It wasn't an ideological choice.
What they did decide was how to pursue it, within which political and
ethical boundaries.

Yes, armed struggle, nasty and bloody, but the M-26-7 set strict
ethical parameters in the conduct of the war against Batista,
parameters that the revolution refined and have continuously tried to
instill and enforce in the armed forces ever since. Fidel has always
viewed the armed struggle as strictly bound to political and *ethical*
criteria. To top it off, Che framed the labor of revolutionaries as a
labor of *love*, at the risk of -- he said -- seeming corny.

The decision to expropriate the local bourgeoisie was also a defensive
measure, partly necessary to cut off resources for the
counter-revolution. The decision to seek support from the Soviet
Union was also defensive, as the U.S. tried to strangle Cuba
economically and attacked it militarily.

In all the cases you mention, Cuba deliberately chose the high road.

> Chavez is something else. And Morales is something else again: no armed
> struggle, no class perspective, commitment to maintaining the form but
> adjusting modestly the content of capitalist rule, that is to say-- private
> property with a "human," i.e. nationalized face.

How did Chavez look to you back in 1999, I wonder? At the time, he's
said it, he believed in the Third Way. He was committed to getting
Venezuela out of the rut, but still willing to give the benefit of the
doubt to the reform of capitalism.

> Too much, really too much. If this is "marxist debate," I'm not
> interested.

Nobody is gagging you -- or forcing you to do anything against your
will. You are entirely free to express yourself, to try and frame
this and other debates in the terms you deem correct. If you think
you can trademark or turn Marxism into some kind of proprietary
technology of the Revolution, go ahead and try. But, likewise, nobody
is going to keep me from expressing myself in what I regard as crucial
to the workers' struggle. Other subscribers and readers have similar
freedoms.

Simple as that.

[S. Artesian]

Process is not procedure, Julio. No one's arguing about the "four freedoms"
or a Marxist bill of rights.

Chavez certainly still gives credence to the reform of capitalism-- look at
the actions of Venezuela in the international capital and bond markets.

The question is do you, or do we, need to engage in a debate about the
possibility of the reform of capitalism.

If that's the central issue for you-- if that's the high road, be my guest.
I've always been more comfortable down on the ground-- that's the old
railroad terminal rat in me, and the line officer.

My blood is hardly boiling. You should have seen me back in the day when I
was actually responsible for things.

[Julio Huato]

On Feb 17, 2:30 am, CEJ wrote:

> Now we have to face another reality. Think about how resilient and
> even radicalized the Iraqi Resistance has been without a superpower or
> at least great power supporting them. Surely some of the US occupation
> plan was to outlast them. Maybe they have, or maybe the Resistance has
> disengaged to quite an extent from armed resistance in order to
> prepare for the end game (or further armed resistance if and/or when
> the US military fails to leave Iraq).
>
> The US left has gone down the rat hole of history over sterile debates
> transplanted from the Soviet Union and China (as well as an inability
> to deal with Zionism and with the illusionary appeal of social causes
> without socialism).
>
> Is it too awful for us to contemplate the idea that a Sunni Fallujahn
> or a Sadrist firing an RPG on an M-1 tank, even though he knows his
> neighborhood will then be raized, is closer to the radical, to the
> revolutionary than any of us will ever know?

Good points.

I do not have the moral authority, or the knowledge, to tell the
Iraqis how to fight their fights. But what we cannot demand is that
people stop fighting with *whatever* means are at hand. If the Iraqis
ever asked for my honest advice about how to best accomplish their
goals (e.g. expel the occupiers and rebuild their nation), my advice
would be rather vague: Unite and keep fighting, that we will try to do
the same here.

[Julio Huato]

On Feb 17, 9:14 am, "S. Artesian" <sartes...@earthlink.net> wrote:

> The question is do you, or do we, need to engage in a debate about the
> possibility of the reform of capitalism.

Now I am really confused.

*Should* capitalism be reformed? Yes, of course.

If we cannot struggle, *within capitalism*, to better our living and
working conditions, then how can we ever transform ourselves into a
leading collective force to radically revolutionize our social
conditions, build communism?

*Can* capitalism be reformed? So far, it's proved to be reformable.
That's part of what makes capitalism so virulent a social order: its
adaptability. Will it remain reformable? Not forever. But, for the
time being, how reformable capitalism is doesn't depend on us. It
depends on the capitalists. If to keep it from reforming they are
willing to bet it all to a decisive battle, they may lose it all.

I wonder if what you really mean is to ask whether the mere reform of
capitalism is sufficient to satisfy the need inherent to our condition
as humans, as producers, as laborers, namely the need to appropriate
our natural and social environments, to shape them up to conform to
our highest aspirations. The answer is no. No way.

The more we manage to reform capitalism, the more radical we will
become.

[Waist...@aol.com]

We suffered from a disconnect, that took me time to understand the meaning of this thread.

 

"On process, strategy, and other matters," call forth and demand testimony, for one to bear witness, of great events and events not so great. Not justification but explanation.

 

All my life I have worked with all kinds of people without beating them over the head with my own belief system. This includes the Liberation Theology Movement in the 1980s, with people I deeply respect. Then there was the short lived American Writers Congress; all kinds of civil rights organizations and trade union groupings. In the mid 1990's there was work in health field and natural healing with herbal products. Much of this work involved dealing with the Church, its leaders and members, because sick people flock to the Church for healing. Being a communist has not only ever been a block to any activity, but serves as a vision/ideology and motivation because of its promise of a better future. The Marxist wing - sector, of communism attraction is its approach to the science of society.  

 

Perhaps, my debating on line gives the wrong impression. Repeatedly, my actions and lived experience has to be mentioned.  

 

During the time of Dr. King I was on the "Malcolm X" wing of the old Negro Peoples Movement, but in Detroit matters were not as simple as a "King" vs. "Malcolm" wing because of its huge industrial proletariat. My specific activity began at age 11 passing out campaign literature for the Michigan Freedom Now Party; one of the two to secure ballot status. The other being in Mississippi. My father's brother, Leroy Mitchell Jr. ran for Secretary of Treasure of the Freedom Now Ballot.  Hence, a certain perspective on electoral politics. And of course there were a couple of "Vote Communists Campaigns" in Detroit, of which I was intimately involved, with intersecting activity with the SWP in that period and intersecting trade union work with the old International Socialist (IS).

 

The "King" side of the movement demanded a moral fiber of which I lacked. There is no need to spend much time on a moral failing I freely admit. This moral weakness informed me that 40 years ago it was better to die on the spot than allow one to spit in my face. My deep and early Church up bringing have for reasons I cannot adequately explain, never allowed me to "turn the other cheek." The idea of anyone harming my child - school integration, wipes out all my logic and rationality, and I am deeply grateful for being born in Detroit where my moral failing could find comfort and support.

 

Dr. King Jr., whom I have grown to understand better in retrospect was an organic intellectual of the highest order.

 

He has found peace.

 

I shall never find peace on this earth, in this existence or the one following that. This knowing creates the comforting solitude without lamentation. 

 

II.

 

It is no secret that much of my ideology is anarchist by inclination; an anarchism tempered by Soviet history and experience. An anarchism that can flourish different as we face the end of the value relations and consequently the epochal shift in the form of the state itself. Ours is time of/as revelations.

 

I was taken off guard by the initial article of this thread. No one refuses to meet life on its own basis.

 

Counter-posing the sum total of Soviet history as the Stalin regime to humanism, and then throwing Pol Pot into the equation, when in fact Stalin is long dead and no one on this list has indicated support of the Pol Pot regime, only opposition to our own imperialist bombing of Cambodia - as it was called, murders; is an accusation of genocide in the case of Pol Pot, and police state tactics and ideology in the case of Comrade Stalin. I do not advocate police state measures, although I accept eternal accusation of such, due to my openly championing the cause of communism.

 

Crimes against humanity.

 

Defense of Soviet history as the Second Coming of the Paris Commune binds me to Stalin, as I suffer 50 years of accusations. After several decades, ones suffering has a way of becoming another source of strength and energy.

 

Let me be concise about Soviet history.

 

For 40 centuries the oppressing class have striven to keep the masses in ignorance and poverty.  A complex intersection of class combined with imperialist states engaging in an orgy of mutual slaughter - being at loggerhead, momentarily allowed the ruled to take power in October 1917. With this assumption of power the world imperialists and world bourgeoisie, went into a frenzy at being overthrown by the great unwashed; shifts its ideological front to a banner of humanism and demand that the ruled treat their enemies with "kid gloves," as the rulers sought the death of the ruled and their leaders, and the overthrow of Soviet Power. Today, having witnessed two decades of what happens to the ruled who dare be overthrown, the humanism of the bourgeoisie is fairly clear.

 

Humanism is the banner of free trade and abject poverty and subjugation of the world masses. Humanism is the refusal - fear, of the prophecy of class. The proletarian revolution is called such because the proletariat as a class is charged with attaching to itself all of humanity in it battle for emancipation. Humanity cannot attach the proletariat to itself as a strategy precisely because humanity is rent with class and class antagonism, rather than merely class contradiction.

 

The first sentence in Chapter 1 of the Communist Manifesto contains a foot note - 2, explaining class as antagonistic movement, rather than the bourgeois definition of history as simply class struggle. Let he/she who has seen the great coming dare to read this footnote. This footnote was inserted because Marx and Engels did not want to change the Manifesto as a historical document, but wanted everyone and every generation to come to understand the profound implications of class antagonism.

 

This does not mean or imply a refusal to group all who can be grouped around the proletariat on the basis of their understanding and momentary strivings.

 

I stand on the side of Soviet Power, warts and all. Generations shall come to know of our victories and follies. We improved the real lives of millions better than and with less pain that the history of capital. The books of our history is open for all to see.

 

III.

 

In fact how dare the bourgeoisie, and its liberal critics criticize our best shot at power since the Paris Commune and before that when the workers - artisans, of Lyon rebelled. Comrade, I was there in heart and spirit. We took power under impossible conditions, with a country in ruin and without help. Because we were not perfect and committed one folly after another we are charged with failing to embrace humanism and respect the sanctity of the individual human life and those of many. This charge stands to this very day although we did not start WWI or WWII.

 

Nor did we clear this land mass of Indians.

 

Yes, mistakes were made. That our mistakes on the scale of history is to compare an ant to an elephant in respects to the private capital - the bourgeois power, this does not prevent us from acknowledging mistakes made and not to be repeated. We look at our own mistakes with clear eyes.

 

Yes, the bureaucracy destroyed us all as the end game. However, we learnt and it is only now, with a revolution in the productive forces that the end game of bureaucracy - (as a layered organization of people founded on an industrial mode and organization), is in sight. No form of organization, no amount of democratic reorganization of the workers themselves; no form of worker organization, can overcome temporal phenomena rooted in the material organization and configuration of the productive forces. In a few words, bureaucracy as an expression of division of labour, rather than the mistaken notion of bureaucracy as human will. Moral fiber as the truly democratic proletariat, free of value cures the latter; history and the destruction of value is the self destruct sequence of the former.

 

In the most personal and intimate sense of flesh, I am not Stalin, but neither is anyone else. Stalin was the improbable affixed to the impossible.  The impossible resides in the value relations itself. Value is a material relations and also a culture/morality and psychology. The state as the material manifest of the irreconcilability of class antagonism, cannot cure psychosis.

 

May I ask, without seeking an answer, if it is understood how the law of value rebelled against us?  Ever time we hit it with the strength of madmen, it hit back twice as hard. In a country with say, 125 million small producers with the fascist of Europe breathing down our necks? No one enjoys fighting the impossible battle. That is why some of us have invested a lifetime into a real time study of the operation of the law of value as humanism and real human intercourse. And we have been rewarded with solving the enigma inside the riddle.

 

Comrade, my eyes have seen the glory of the coming.

 

In the face of the impossible we have dared to gleam into the future, with both feet firmly planted in science. We foretell the historical limits of capital. Capital cannot be reformed, as the value relations but the ruling class can indeed leap to a new political basis, with a new bureaucracy in hand, while clinching to symbolic forms of wealth. Again the impossible arise as a possible probable.  

 

What is one to do when the impossible is forced upon you?

 

IV.

 

I could just as easily tell this story as the men and women fleeing European reactions in the wake of 1848. There story is bitter and sweet. The  case of the blacks as slaves and then freemen is instructive. We - some, choose to fight and die as men, driven by the dizzying and intoxicated knowing of the impossibility of the impossible fight. Each decade a little more was realized amid complex class intersection and yearly shifting political alliances. Every night became a party; every meal a banquet, every pay check a fortune. And then we died decade after decade until a change in the productive forces - the tractor and mechanization of agriculture, opened a portal in reality - the future, allowing escape from a torment that seemed to have no beginning or end. Then the battle was waged/raged inside the industrial proletariat.

 

What was won and converted into a Marxist theoretical proposition was the following: no form of the working class can be truly emancipated until its human energy is displaced by machinery - invention. Then  . . . . then, the form of labor as a property form is overthrown. We are true to Marx spirit and carefully chart the living moments.

 

The value relations.

 

Bloodletting.

 

One must understanding our secret, the secret one keeps that drives them insane and then the sanity that conquers insanity. Our deepest shame and pride. The dizzying drunk.

 

As slaves many of our women killed our own children. Master adopted a policy where the children were taken from us as they emerged from the womb. And we cried because we were unable to slay them at birth and deny master his precious capital. Our tears has alkalized the earth and is the stuff of the earth's renewal, that is why amid continuous environmental ruining we smile. It is our blood that shall alkalize the earth itself and reassert the grand spiraling logic of life.

 

Discussion of "failing to understand" humanism, even the implication of such, provokes profound emotions. We are to be charged with historical child murder I suppose. Somehow we - I, am to be lumped with Pol Pot and fantastic schemes of the small producers mentality and the "killing fields." We are to be charged with the emergence of the impossible answer affixed to the impossible equation that is imperialist enslavement and capital. I hear this charge today as it is level against those who strap bombs to their children to slay the imperialist invaders. I'm no bomb thrower but understanding the logic that confronts the impossible.

 

"If we shall die let it not be like hogs."

 

Capital as private property did not have to happen.

This is not understood.

 

Historical inevitability means the inevitable consequence of another complex of factors, which have already completed partial formation, rather than inevitable history. Property forms are contested as precisely the material shape of history. Class is riveted to division of labor at its genesis - tap root, while the property form is greed made manifest. That is to say that division of labor predates property, and this property comes to stand upon division of labor. Value springs from and is rooted in economic relations as trade. Not so with the value relations as a universal system of exchange.  

 

Stated another way: if surplus gives rise to property then there is no basis to fight for economic communism.

 

The emergence of a surplus in history did not create the property form, but rather expressed a certain development in the productive forces. Its rise - the property form of history, marked a catastrophic defeat of the historical man himself, and consequently humanism as communist society formation.  The spontaneous communists movement, is thousands of years old, as this movement transformed itself at every qualitative redefinition of the productive forces. The value relations as systematic exchange governing a society is the defeat of humanism. Commodity production does not call forth bourgeois property; only a widening division of labor. Class as property defeats humanism, by universalizing the value relations as the dominating material relations between producers. Marx humanism is tightly bonded with class as property.

 

Capital seeks to transform itself again.

 

We shall carry the fight to the gates of hell itself.

 

Why? Because it is right.

 

My individual humanism, firmly bonded with scientific Marxism, is firmly rooted in the knowing of earth's first intellectual, who hails by the name Enoch in various English language biblical and sacred text. My materialism dates back to Maccabees 4. My science of society was reshaped in the hand of Marx himself.

 

My mistakes are my own.

 

I never mistake the moment and shifting alliances with the goal, the prophetic vision. Such is why we spend a lifetime explaining in clear terms the meaning of reform - as in the case of South Africa and Mandela, and why it should not be confused with the meaning of concessions; or revolution in the mode of production. For 30 years we have dared pushed the boundary and quantified each step forward in clear, precise and unmistakable terms. Obama candidacy and victory was quantified on this very list, as one man's contribution to Black History Month. Surely, one cannot blame another for grasping their moment as history. The last portal to open was in 1939. All we have to do today, is impact 60 - 70 million people with crisp and understandable concepts of class.

 

Like Enoch, the very first biblical/historical communists, the modern communists are charged to carry out their responsibility to the earth: educate the masses who are a class. We enter the arena with literature and books; knowing; that must be passed to the new leaders of a class. Renouncing class outlook and not proclaiming the end of the value relations is to renounce communism in ones heart and soul. Such as act is not possible for he or she riveted to value.

 

In moments of Revelations imagination has a premium because one must embrace a vision of the possible that is trapped inside the impossible. My eyes have seen the glory.

 

On the scale of history only the words have slightly shifted.

 

Rally Comrades, for the last fight we face.

The International shall be the human race.

 

Unite or Perish!

 

 

WL.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In a message dated 2/17/2009 2:14:16 A.M. Eastern Standard Time, julio...@gmail.com writes:

 

Honest questions regarding movements that, ostensibly, took the high road in their streategy:

Was the right stance re. -- say -- Lenin-Kautsky debate material to Dr. King's struggle and the advancement of civil rights in the U.S. in the 1960s?  Was it material to Nelson Mandela's struggle and the end of Apartheid?

Was the "high road" a hindrance that made these struggles more costly in human terms or was it the key to their intensely committed mass appeal and eventual (partial) success?  Would a "tougher" and "meaner" Fidel or Chávez or Morales or Correa stand a chance in today's Latin America?

What conclusions can we draw for the U.S. today?

I ask these questions well aware of the fact that -- without the Soviet Union, Eastern European communism, Cuba, and Vietnam in the background -- the partial successes of the civil rights struggle would have been much more costly; just like the end of Apartheid would have been without Cuba's decisive internationalist intervention in Angola and overall support of SWAPO and ANC -- Cuba's own high road made possible by the existence of the Soviet Union.

 

---

Need a job? Find an employment agency near you.

[S. Artesian]

Sure capitalism can be re-formed. It was re-formed after WW2; it was
re-formed after the return on investment peaked in 1969-- and look at the
costs. And that's the point-- the reform of capitalism involves a cost.
Cost the lives of millions of workers didn't it? Cost a whole decade in
Latin America, didn't it?

The reforms that are undertaken are undertaken to advance the accumulation
of capital; so no, we are not about advocating, agitating, for the reform of
capitalism. We, Marxists, are about agitating, advocating, those things
that pose the issue of POSSESSION, ownership of the means of production,
USE, NEED, as opposed, and these things are in direct opposition, to the
accommodation to the mode of accumulation. We, again Marxists, are for
those things that distinguish class, that distinguish a different
class-based mode of reproduction from the accumulation of capital. We are
about finding those elements of transition in program, practice, and
organization, that a class developing its power as a class, puts forth to
bind all its uneven and combined elements to itself, that pushes itself
forward, that makes itself not just the alternative to re-formation of
capitalist accumulation, but its overthrow, its supercession, its
over-coming.

So... that's why we oppose the bailouts when left Keynesians like Doug
Henwood support the bailouts. That's why we oppose federal grants to the
states to "administer" Medicaid.

That's why we think there is an alternative to capitalism; to bailouts; to
nationalizations that leave the mode of accumulation intact, undisturbed;
that simply transfer the title of accumulation among those riding the
capitalist calliope.

You brought up the "high road," citing Morales, Allende, Correa, and Kautsky
vs. Lenin-- , and you could have brought up the republican government of
Spain in 1936--as if somehow accommodation to the bourgeoisie on this high
road has not always meant sacrificing to slaughter the working class-- as if
the "noble" path of reform didn't involve reaccumulation in a most draconian
form.

The more you think you reform capitalism, the more other people pay the
price. And that's no high road at all.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Julio Huato" <julio...@gmail.com>
To: "Marxist Debate" <marxist...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Tuesday, February 17, 2009 3:50 PM
Subject: [Marxist Debate] Re: On process, strategy, and other matters

[Marvin Gandall]

Artesian writes:

> The reforms that are undertaken are undertaken to advance the accumulation
> of capital; so no, we are not about advocating, agitating, for the reform
> of
> capitalism. We, Marxists, are about agitating, advocating, those things
> that pose the issue of POSSESSION, ownership of the means of production,
> USE, NEED, as opposed, and these things are in direct opposition, to the
> accommodation to the mode of accumulation.

====================================
Really? Does this mean that you would have stood - would stand - in
opposition to popular reform struggles which did not and do not pose the
issue of ownership of the means of production? Such as:

a) the extension of voting rights;

b) Reduction in work time;

c) Legalization of the trade unions and the right to strike;

d) Old age pensions, public education, unemployment insurance, universal
health care, etc.

The capitalists undertook these reforms, not only because of popular
pressure, because they also recognized that these, each in their own way,
WOULD ALSO "advance the accumulation of capital" without posing "the issue
of...ownership of the means of production". You would have argued against
revolutionary Marxists supprting those struggles that "we are not about

advocating, agitating, for the reform of capitalism."

Reforms are contradictory: they've both improved the conditions of the
working class while containing its militancy and thwarting the potential for
a socialist revolution.

What demands have you been agitating pose the issue of ownership and would
prevent the further accumulation of capital? For that matter, what demands
have you been proposing recently which have arisen organically from the
masses at this stage of their development rather than from the program you
have developed for them?

[S. Artesian]

Wow, those are toughees Marvin, write up there with choose A or B, otherwise
it's all your fault, and the other hard one about anything other than the
MAX is capitulation.

You fail to distinguish between capitalist reforms initiated by the
capitalists to refound accumulation, and the social movements that are in
origin, as the civil rights movement was, a manifestation, the response, the
rebellion, the living embodiment of the conflict between the means of
production and relations of production.

So Marxists stand with the social movement, as I'm proud to say I did in the
60s, young Marxist that I was-- with a movement that began with equality and
then developed to express its core-- which was the emancipation of labor.

Maybe that's too deep, or too low a road-- but it led to some pretty great
events, and opportunities- like the sit-ins, the Memphis Sanitation Strike,
the LRBW, those kinds of things.

More later, if it's necessary, and it shouldn't be, given the remarkably
superficial nature of the questions you pose.

[Julio Huato]

On Tue, Feb 17, 2009 at 11:48 AM, S. Artesian <sart...@earthlink.net> wrote:

> Sure capitalism can be re-formed. It was re-formed after WW2; it was
> re-formed after the return on investment peaked in 1969-- and look at the
> costs. And that's the point-- the reform of capitalism involves a cost.
> Cost the lives of millions of workers didn't it? Cost a whole decade in
> Latin America, didn't it?

You make it seem as if the reason why capitalism wasn't overthrown ca.
1945 or 1969 or the 1980s in Latin America was that Marxists abandoned
the *idea* of the Revolution and adopted instead the *idea* of
limiting the struggle to the Reform of capitalism.

> The reforms that are undertaken are undertaken to advance the accumulation
> of capital; so no, we are not about advocating, agitating, for the reform of
> capitalism.

My understanding is that when the question of "reforms" under
capitalism is posed, we are not talking about capitalist initiatives
against a backdrop of working class passivity or defeat. We are not
talking about tricks that may allow a group of capitalists to steal
from other capitalists or tricks for all capitalists to intensify
exploitation, push back against workers' conquests, etc.

In fact, in case the context of my remarks is not clear, I am assuming
the exact opposite of working class passivity. In this context,
"reforms" are changes in the system that capitalists are *forced* to
undertake to prevent larger loses, e.g. better working and living
conditions for workers, not only those immediately negotiated between
workers and their capitalist employers, but also those that result
from the political process.

A wage increase, an increase in the legal minimum wage, stopping a
war, changing a foreign policy, getting a publicly funded social
program implemented, even nationalizing banks are reforms of this
kind.

In my understanding, socialists -- and Marxists in particular -- have
always *agitated* for this type of reforms.

In the tradition of Marxism, as I understand it, there's a sharp
distinction between agitation and propaganda.

Agitation is about implementing a tactical plan. Tactical plans
result from a *process* of collective discovery in the struggle,
involving masses of workers in collective motion. Propaganda is about
carrying out a strategy. A strategic plan results from the same
*process* above, but viewed more broadly, as a more protracted
process, with steps in the direction pointed by the struggle's
longer-term compass.

And workers move collectively because they have common needs unmet
under existing conditions. For the most part, workers don't move as a
result of propaganda. Nor do they move as a result of agitation
unrelated to their immediate unmet needs. Both tactics and strategy
are means for workers to meet their perceived needs. It's the
struggle that turn the workers' needs into *radical needs*.

In the collective *process* through which tactical and strategic plans
are discovered, Marxists try to contribute. They take part, not as a
separate "party," not in accordance with pulled-off-their-hair
sectarian principles, but as workers who are trying to place front and
center the broader interests of the class, who are trying to persuade,
cajole, *lead* other workers towards greater unity in action. That's
Manifesto 101. Workers unite! Your liberation is your own task!

That is what I am calling *process*, in opposition to its *results*.
Because the sectarian approach is, here, I have the strategy and
tactics, drawn from my own brain or, at most, the brains of a few
thinkers. I already know. I know everything there's to know about
the political economy of capitalism. I'm just passing my knowledge on
to you. Take it from me. Absorb it. (Not really *learn* it, because
learning entails that the subject is herself motivated, engaged in the
discovery and appropriation of knowledge. Knowledge is, to use Marx's
phrase, ad hominem to the subject.) In the sectarian approach,
process is subordinated to intended results -- the adoption of *my*
views, of *my* program, of *my* strategic and tactical vision.

We seem to be using a different language.

And I should be grading my students' assignments. Back to work tomorrow.

[CEJ]

JH:> I do not have the moral authority, or the knowledge, to tell the

> Iraqis how to fight their fights.  But what we cannot demand is that
> people stop fighting with *whatever* means are at hand.  If the Iraqis
> ever asked for my honest advice about how to best accomplish their
> goals (e.g. expel the occupiers and rebuild their nation), my advice
> would be rather vague: Unite and keep fighting, that we will try to do
> the same here.<<

The Iraqi Resistance (led by both Sunni and Shia Islamists) has an
American issue thrown by force onto it--before that they were in
previous forms resisting Saddam Hussein (this resistance is largely
unknown to Americans who have been taught that Iraq Resistance is
dominated by either Saddam hold-out bitterenders or Al Qaeda--and Bush-
Cheney would like you to believe they are the same category).
Fallujah, for example, had long been a hot bed of Sunni Islamist
resistance to Saddam's regime, and the Shia elements that coalesed
around al Sadr were also often in trouble with the regime (although
this is complicated because Iraq had tried to promote Arab Shia Islam
in order to counter Persian influence, and before that Iraq had given
haven to Khomeini when he was in trouble with the Shah and the clerics
who supported the Shah).

We have an Iraq issue thrown on us because we live in a country that
throws itself on Iraq.

When people ask questions like , Why can't we have health care? I
always try to reply you can't have it because your government is
devoted to militarism, and spends the money accordingly.

I think we are arguing about how hopeful, how pessimistic, and why we
are these. I see the left in American politics as the ultimate source
for ideas when there is a crisis (which is perhaps why I am intolerant
of slopping thinking among leftists, although I realize some will
think I'm sloppy myself).

There is no magic in profits and markets and 'free enterprise', as the
past 25 years and their culmination (the current crisis) show. Under
the current system, though, there is no way to participate with those
ideas politically. Which is why we tend to get frustrated discussing
and arguing in forums like this.

It's like that sterile debate we had on Marxmail years ago about
Kucinich--or about Nader for that matter. Should we try to work in the
confines of the Democratic Party? I say yes, if you mean a Kucinich or
a Gravel. If that is what you want to do (with no moral compunction
put on others). But realize it means you paid for a nice union-made t-
shirt for one of them (and your money if you contributed was better
spent putting it into Kucinich's congressional re-election campaign)
and that is about all you get.

The same with supporting a Nader (except this about the futility of
third party efforts in the US). Sure, if I thought it was worth going
to all the trouble to get a mail-in ballot for absentee voting (the
absurdity of living in Japan for 19 years and having to deal with
Franklin County, PA to vote notwithstanding), I would vote for Nader.
But the last time I bothered, my only choice was Bush or Kerrey. And
there is no way to vote absentee in primaries. Neither party could
give a shit. This year I saved the postage and that and some other
expenses saved (e.g., unnecessary leisure travel), I contributed what
I saved to earthquake and flood victims in Asia.

I am not sure what it means to continue the struggle in a developed
'western' liberal market economy democracy (and that is what Japan
says it is, whether Americans think that or not).
I do think making quick and easy connections like no health care, lots
of spending on war is understandable. People will react almost
violently to such rhetoric most likely because they sense the truth of
it.

[CEJ]

>>We have an Iraq issue thrown on us because we live in a country that
throws itself on Iraq. <<

I often write things like that because I'm still an American citizen--
have to file taxes in two countries instead of one. Don't vote in
either. I have health insurance (such as it is, ever more expensive,
ever cut down in benefits) because I work full-time in Japan and can
pay for it (in part, it is based on how much you earn, and a single
person pays a higher individual rate than a married person, than a
married couple with children).

Besides, much to my dismay, Japan was a rock solid partner in crime to
the invasion and occupation of Iraq, and they pump fuel all over the
world for the US military (full service to them as they phase it out
here to go to self-service).

[S. Artesian]

I think we need to go back to the basis of the discussion which was
delineation between high road vs low road, with the low road somehow being
"anti-humanist" and the high road being "humanist," extending one's hand
to the enemy, that sort of business.

And the question you put was essentially does the low road offer any chance
of success-- would the low road, which I guess means combat militancy of
class-specific organizations, ready and willing to engage in pre-emptive
suppression of its enemies, with all the messiness, mistakes, brutality
inherent in combat -- have any practical viability, and chance of success of
a Morales, a Correa?

Do I have that right? Because if I don't, then we need to chuck everything
that's been said and start over-- probably not a bad idea to do that anyway,
but rather than risk repeating the same mis-communication, I'll wait for
your answer.

[bing]

Sartesian: The more you think you reform capitalism, the more other

people pay the
price. And that's no high road at all.

^^^
CB: Is it then that you consider it not the best course to develop
slogans as I suggest, because they are reform slogans ?

[bing]

Julio,
Would you reiterate what you mean by high road ?
Charles

[Julio Huato]

I'd like to reply to S. Artesian and CB. My plan is to take a big
step back and reflect again on the issues. And see where that leads.
All reactions are welcome. Problem is I don't know how to make it
short. So, I'm going to send it in pieces, as I type things. Here's
my first batch. Maybe I'll be able to type a second batch later
tonight.

* * *

On Feb 18, 6:49 am, "S. Artesian" wrote:

> I think we need to go back to the basis of the discussion which was
> delineation between high road vs low road, with the low road somehow being
> "anti-humanist" and the high road being "humanist," extending one's hand
> to the enemy, that sort of business.

Okay. Let's retrace steps.

Motivated by old reflections and new readings on events in various
contexts (Venezuela, the U.S.), thinking aloud, I tried to derive some
general lessons on political strategy. I admit it: some of my
thoughts are rather vague and abstract. But I did show that they have
practical relevance.

1. Process

I emphasized the need for *process* as opposed to results. I don't
think that reminding ourselves of this is unnecessary: We, actually-
existing Marxists do not have the Truth. I'd like to think that *we*
do have a piece of it. We are trying to preserve some general
insights from a rich historical experience and intellectual
tradition. But those insights, as much as we deem them general (and
general they may indeed be) were the product of the *specific*
conditions, *limited* experiences, etc.

We are not starting from scratch. But often our own "dogmas" (as Marx
put it) are big obstacles. In any case, if the truth is concrete,
then we have to discover it -- and re-discover it -- collectively, as
we engage the object of our political work, the society we aim to
transform, and transform it as we transform ourselves. Cognitive
dissonance is a problem. We need to rein in ourselves and remain open
to discovery and correction.

Because, conditioned (limited and enabled) by time, space, and
circumstance, we necessarily start with a partial one-sided view of
things, this collective *process* of struggle, learning, and
transformation is absolutely *essential*. It may sound scandalous
when I say that *process* is both a means to an end *and* an end in
itself. But it is ABC. Process is the contradictory unity of means
and ends.

This, by the way, is Hegel in the Logic: The Becoming as the
unfolding, back-and-forth, contradictory unity of the Being and the
Nothing. Citing from memory: "The truth is neither being nor nothing,
but the being becoming, i.e. turning into nothing, and the nothing
becoming, i.e. turning into being." The truth is *the process*.

Process is how we discover *communism* in our present (the only time
that really exists, since the past is gone and the future not yet
here), as opposed to merely keeping it as a vision of the future.
This is the sense in which I find a rational kernel in Michael
Lebowitz's phrase, "Build it now!" Our being is not full communism,
but in a sense our current practice (our Becoming), *the process*,
prefigures or must prefigure communism -- at least as a tendency.

As Marx said in that letter to Ruge I keep coming back to, the
starting point is the concrete struggles of people against the
existing conditions, struggles that are not necessarily all neat and
kosher. People struggle with whatever is at hand: objective and
subjective instruments. In that sense, David has a point. Those are
the concrete processes (in the aggregate, I call it, *the* process)
that we must take part in, because it is through them that we will
transform the world and transform ourselves, our collective
consciousness and being. Taking part doesn't mean accepting as they
are. We engage, transform, and expose ourselves to be transformed by
the process.

We all bring a complex, contradictory baggage into the process. It is
through reworking it all out that we will advance.

[S. Artesian]

Don't disagree with any of that, or maybe I disagree with all of it... but,

the truth that we don't have is the whole, that truth is concrete, that
truth is based on the immanent antagonisms of capital, and those antagonisms
present themselves as NECESSITY, as necessities in struggle, i.e. what
capitalism must do to maintain itself; what the proletariat must do to
overcome the slaughter that capitalism must impose.

If, as you say, we need to "rein in" ourselves in order to discover and
correct, how then can we discount the need for imagination and audacity to
remedy the prosaic, pedestrian repetitition compulsion that truly reproduces
the very obsolescence capital has already demonstrated?

No, we're not starting from scratch-- the fact of the truth is that its
concreteness, its totality is historical. We can apprehend that history,
and we can assess the shortcomings of previous struggles-- ones that were
just as much about process as this current one is. But if the process is
driven by the immanent contradictions, the immanent antagonisms, then there
is inherent also, the resolution of the contradictions-- there is in fact
not just process but necessary solutions, goals, or, if you prefer--
overcoming, supercession, [I don't think synthesis does it justice. Maybe
aufheben is the right word}

And all of this is why I just don't get what you are driving at with "high
road" vs. "low road" especially when you link it up with Morales, the MAS,
Correa, and the ANC. I think, if we are going to examine any of these, we
have to examine the economic, i.e. concentrated historical conditions,
spawning them, the economic impetus to their ascent to power, and what the
contradictions of those economies are and what these various players
represent, or propose, in either the resolution or reproduction of those
contradictions.