<<<It seems to me that his emphasis on "universal human values" was a way of papering over the contradictions and class antagonisms that were inherent in the Soviet Union at that time.>>>>> JF > > At 03:38 PM 3/28/2006 -0500, [EMAIL PROTECTED] (mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote:
> >I'd say opposing nuclear war on the basis of universal human > values is a Marxist, materialist concept. > > > >CB > > > > > >MP: OK . . . so what. You say lots of things Mr. Lawyer in the > fashion of Lenin. Comment I wonder if Bill Gates or Bill Ford of the Ford Motor Company oppose nuclear war. What of non-nuclear war? As a common sense question and abstract proposition most thinking adults, no matter what their ideology would oppose nuclear war. I know of no one who advocated a nuclear exchange between the governments of America and the former Soviet Union. Such individuals may have existed but I know none of them personally. Charles dilemma is that he is seeking to explain why Gorbachev was a great Marxist humanitarian on the basis of his foreign policy and ideological utterances. Charles logic is embarrassing simple and mechanical: Gorbachev placed the survival of mankind above the class struggle, recognizing that nothing is more important than the survival of humanity. Marxism is first concerned - according to CB, with human material survival, thus Gorbachev's kowtowing to imperialism was honorable and the highest expression of Marxist humanism. I believe and much of the history record confirms for me that Gorbachev was not in fact driven by humanitarian concerns at all but the internal party struggle within the old Soviet Union; how he would survive it and how he could convince a critical mass of the Soviet elite and bureaucracy to support his economic program and political policies. I believe, given my ideology and political orientation, that Gorbachev represented a particular social phenomenon that presents itself as the major danger to socialism in power. This dangerous social phenomenon is called the bureaucracy by some, the Stalinist bureaucracy by others, nomenclature by still others and a caricature of the bourgeoisie attuned to the world bourgeoisie by myself. This caricature of the bourgeoisie arises on the basis of the industrial infrastructure as it evolves and develop from the previously existing landed property relations - feudalism, and passes through its various quantitative boundaries restructuring the societal mode of production. ***************** CB: Marxism is fundamentally, before it gets to classes, concerned with human material survival. <<<<How can there be any distinction, unless you mean before there is class society, historically there were classless subsistence societies? I don't even understand this assertion.>>>>>>>>> MP: "Marxism is fundamentally, before it gets to classes, concerned with human material survival" formulates the method of approach deployed by Marx and his doctrine of combat against the bourgeois power, in a manner to rationalize the policies and projection of Gorbachev as the personification of this dangerous social phenomenon that presents itself as the major danger to socialism in power. From this standpoint I agree with JF's concluding remarks concerning Gorbachev's intentions and actual policies and their results. Marx and Engels approach to human existence always presupposed the existence of people. This presupposing means that people exists and had to have already survived as a species. How these people reproduce themselves and their life activity as species activity; the various stages of development of tools, instruments, machinery and energy sources: the social forms of organization, forms of wealth and corresponding superstructure relations embodying property rights is their concern, rather than the ideological abstraction called "human material survival." There is more. Marxism is an "ism" because it is a theory and doctrine of class struggles or the struggle between contending and new classes connected to the changes in the mode of production. "(I)n a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes." This theory and doctrine associated with the name of Marx, espouses a distinct political doctrine that states that the current social struggle in our society - (since the advent of the domination of machine society as the primary form of society organization and species activity, or what is called industrial society with its bourgeois mode of accumulation, must lead to a communist society, as Marx defines it and the political form of this transition is what Marx calls the dictatorship of the proletariat. The issue faced by states and governments in their actual life activity with other states and governments are never driven by concepts of universal human values and there exists no evidence of such in all of written human history. Human values are understood from the standpoint of a lived experience in a specific kind of society at a historically specific moment of history, in a specific environment where states and military grouping interact with each other. Again. I state that Charles has not understood the lessons of Sodom and Gomorah as mythology and I most certainly do not mean anything associated with sex or judgments of sexual conduct. Once stripped of its most reactionary articulation by our degenerate bourgeoisie, Sodom and Gomorah is a tale of the destruction of contending classes, contending power elite's and military forces. Under the banner of humanitarian values Gorbachev began wrecking Soviet military power in order to defeat his internal opponents and to redirect resources back into the Soviet economy as a basis to rejuvenate its stagnating industrial system. Gorbachev's limiting and withdrawal of economic support to Cuba, amongst other areas of withdrawal was not governed by humanitarian concerns at all. The reason that the Soviet State and American imperialism never entered direct military conflict during the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s is the sure knowledge of our imperialist that they would not survive intact as a state or class. The only time nuclear confrontation was an issue between these states is when one perceived its national existence at stake. Such was the case in the Cuban/Turkey Missle Crisis. That Charles would forward an article called "NATURE IS MY GOD: Gorbachev" without critical comments is a commentary within itself. Charles expresses a body of identifiable class politics and writes what he believes and holds dear in his heart and then argues like a petty attorney to "prove" and validate his beliefs. The dilemma is that he presents his beliefs as the authoritative Marxist position in America and the world communist movement, although he refuses to justify why one should take him serious as having a position in the social movement that merits such authority. Melvin P. _______________________________________________ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list [email protected] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
