HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK ---------------------------
Well said Barry! Thanks for that post. mart ----- Original Message ----- From: Barry Stoller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Friday, January 18, 2002 10:06 PM Subject: Re: Did the left lose the war? HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --------------------------- Andy Beckett, Guardian: Did the left lose the war? Kabul fell in five weeks. The Islamic world has not erupted. So did the left get it all wrong - and does it matter? Immediately before September 11, the outlook had seemed reasonably favourable for the left... the swelling profile of anti-corporate protests since Seattle, the polemics against international trade and sweatshops selling well in high street book shops, the apparent revival of militancy in some unions... Noam Chomsky, the dissident American academic who is probably the biggest influence on modern anti-capitalists, writes gloomily: "It is certainly a setback... Terrorist atrocities are a gift to the harshest and most repressive elements on all sides... Tariq Ali... is writing a book exploring the similarities between Bush and Bin Laden, and their ambitions to impose their aggressive, religiously-based ideas on the rest of the world... The anti-globalisation movement, you could say, has spent the past decade or so developing a sophisticated critique of modern business - an economic policy, if you like - but it has neglected to draw up a foreign policy, a coherent set of proposals for how countries should operate and behave towards each other. The anti-globalisation movement has been forced to grow up in another way, too. "Some people," says Wainwright, "used to think that if religious fundamentalists are anti-capitalist, then we don't need to challenge them." All of the above reveals the bankruptcy of liberalism and anarchism, especially if they're mixed together. It wasn't the 'left's' war. Who said bin Laden is the 'left' anyway? Of course, if he was, we can be sure good old Chomsky would be there to demoralize everyone by pointing out the 'moral' divergence between praxis and his utopian conceptions. Tariq Ali? When he compares bin Laden to Bush, we can be sure he'd say the same of Lenin. And plenty of 'left' publications would -- they certainly did -- give lots of air time to that sort of stuff. Does the 'anti-globalization' movement have a 'foreign policy'? Yes. Mostly it's a repudiation of everything global in favor of regionalism and localism, i.e. small time, early capitalism. Which brings me to the false claim that 'religious fundamentalists are anti-capitalist.' They're not. Usually they are also in favor of regionalism and localism, i.e. small time, early capitalism. The Soviets took on all of that crap, in Afghanistan to name but one battleground. Where was Chomsky then? Where was the 'left' then? Where were the anarchists then? Ah, hell, we know the answer, it's all sickening. Lastly. Although it wasn't the 'left's' war, it wasn't 'lost.' Bin Laden won. He masterminded a great hit on the great symbols of US power and got clean away with it. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Barry Stoller http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ProletarianNews ==^================================================================ This email was sent to: archive@jab.org EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.a9WB2D Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^================================================================
