---------- Forwarded Message ---------- From: neil, 74742,1651 TO: Leninism, INTERNET:[EMAIL PROTECTED] CC: Neil C., 74742,1651 DATE: 8/19/99 9:00 PM RE: IN 20 Dear Abu Nasr, et al, I don't think i have ever argued that "......nations are a fiction, and only class matters" etc, etc. Such views would would amount to an absurdity, a flight away from scientific materialism . I have argued that marxist support (critical) for new bourgeois nation states, was an advance (economically) in the17- 18th -19th century. This , was before the claws of the capitalist world market dominated the globe and the huge proletariat was created world wide. But since the period of imperialist WW1, material conditions for possible proletarian revolution on a world scale have existed.. Previously i had also pointed out how this affected a qualitative change in the bolsheviks own programme (in Lenin's April thesis) and tactics and how they too wrestled with the vexed question of toilers struggles and especially movements in capitalisms peripheral countries. In no way did i ever mean to disparage efforts by toilers groups, urban or rural in the peripheral states. It is understood that here too the waged slaves must organize independently of their bourgeoisie . Given that normally military/political/economic repression in the peripheral states is much greater than inside most of the metropoles, the communist programme for the dictatorship of the proletariat (DOP-soviet power) and not the fraud of bourgeois "democratic" national reform/liberation for workers has since WW1, become the order of the day. The basic programme of fighting for the DOP power applies to workers in all nation states , but the tactics , given the conditions, are somewhat different in each country. As concerns Abu's claim that really 'socialism' has failed in the Russia and bloc states. I can only say that if one looked critically at the social relations dominant in these states , it is easy to see no economic or political mass organs a la soviets, councils have existed since the early 20s. (Russia was the only one with a proletarian revolution even taking state power ) The workers afterward remained waged slaves , buying and selling continued, as did money, profits, class priveliges, and a never much 'restricted' law of value ,etc. but under more direct state control. Smells pretty much like state capitalist accumulation , not any real paring down of all this as part of any transition to socialist /communist relations . Things may have turned out differently if the soviet revolutions in Germany. Austria, Hungary and Finland as well as Italy had not been crushed by bourgeois reaction allied with its social democracy (SD) in 1918-23. Abu also points to the chauvinism of the Bersteinian wings of SD before the WW1 esp as concerns Zionism/Palestine . But social democracy had also been exposed as no longer a working class internationalist movement after each SD national party had supported its own imperialist bourgeois in WW1 (by the way many SD's even used 'national liberation" arguments to justify this betrayal!) Historically nationalist ideology binds the workers to their own bourgeois . National Liberation states are no longer any 'step forward" for workers because in this epoch , one imperialist bloc or another allies with every national liberated state to dominate it capitalistically and the national state is a bourgeois state, (even if some pre- capitalist relations still exist) i.e the state used to control and repress the toilers. The term 'peripheral capitalist countries' best descibes only in general terms the countries outside the metropoles but at the same time each peripheral state must be understood in its social economic particulars as for example one cannot consider India's social reations to be the same as, say, Uganda, etc . Necessary distinctions must be made. At the same time the key factor that imperialism as a WORLD system (dare I say today globalized!!) has effectively super-imposed the the laws of the international market and the economic mechanisms which accompany it on pre-capitalist socio-economic forms so the vampire-infested 'global village' (or pillage) system dominates even the remotest parts of the globe. The centers of the capitalist system draws the peripheries into their orbits thru the export of goods and capital plus the imports of raw materials and agricultural products and their integration into the internatinal division of labor. This force impells each country to become incorporated into capitalism's cycle of reproduction and accumulation and the laws of the system exports capitals contradictions to all these countries with a vengeance. In the imperialist epoch even more sharply, capital dominates by also perpetuating pre-bourgeois social and political systems , as long as the laws of maximum profits are served ,as these relations also serve to keep the employed and disinherited masses divided. Also capital also gets a breather as when revolts do break out, they can be better snuffed out via the political fools gold of national bourgeois progressivism. Mass organizations of struggle arise out of deepening social oppression of capitals dominance . Today in the peripheries, the communist DOP-soviet programme no doubt could get a better -wider hearing today than in the metropolitan countries. Communists should organize as a Party to build up workplace as well as territorial groups of struggle and influence them with the communist class programme, against a nationalist class collaborationist one, in the course of the budding struggles . The national bourgeoisie has, for the most part , become a constituent part of the international bourgeoise which dominates the the whole system of exploitation because it holds posession of the means of production on an international scale. These material connections put the national bourgeoisies in cahoots to rob the workers, and each participate in the realtive division of surplus value which is extorted INTERNATIONALLY from the proletariat. Fighting today for any final goal of the class struggles other than the proletariats state power means acepting one form of bourgeois state or another and this means violence and continued exploitation of workers. Austerity & Repression, not long term reform is what occupies the bags of political tricks of all burgeoisies . No bourgeois state anywhere will allow real proletarian mass political organization to grow without savagely attacking it, this is so whether the state is the most 'democratic' or, clericalist, or semi- fascist. Of course the reality is is that in face of deep exploitation and repression, nationalist groups will exist, competing with communist workers forces. Given the savage oppression of capital , deep poverty , in some cases , open foreign occupation troops / more direct domination , etc. we can understand why many honest rank and file toilers get influenced by the nationalist bourgeois promises. We communists should point out why nationalist programmes are a trap/dead end in this epoch . But we will only be believed if we become serious activists inside the concrete struggles against super- exploitation and oppression in all countries in accordance with relating to the general demands of the workers. Our agitation, propaganda and political organizing on these questions will lead again to the accentuation of the proletariats class stamp on the mass struggle movements and influence the building of unity with the proleatarian struggles in the oppressing countries. neil Communist-left http://www.ibrp.org . --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
