At 12:54 15/04/00 -0400, Louis Proyect wrote:
>The conjuncture of a sharp decline in the US equity markets, weekend
>protests in Washington DC against the IMF and World Bank, and the
>continuing battle over custody of Elian Gonzalez raises interesting
>questions about the class struggle.
>
>Marxism, especially of the academic variety, tends to lag behind changes in
>the objective conditions. This was most obviously the case with the market
>socialist trend popular about a decade or so ago, which took as an
>operating principle the utopian beliefs of the Eastern European
>intelligentsia of the previous decade.
>
>While it is not meant to provide a crystal ball for the future, it is
>imperative that Marxism stay focused on current realities with the hope
>that underlying dynamics might be identified. Understanding such dynamics
>helps us make battle plans for the future.
>
>LATIN AMERICAN and the CARIBBEANS: The G-77 conference held in Havana last
>week, which provided a venue for Fidel Castro's stinging attack on the
>World Bank and IMF, was notable for the obvious close links between the
>Cubans and the Venezuelans.
I understood Castro also prominently greeted Mugabe. Both these leaders
seem strikingly confident, although their motives and politics are different.
Many of Mugabe's moves are debatable but the demand for land distribution
is a just one, if a bourgeois one. It is also a demand to overthrow the
imperialist land settlement. It may be inept, it may be cynical, it may not
be wise. But it is just. And essentially it is not his, but that of the
landless population.
Land reform of course has taken place in many capitalist countries.
It is true that countries like Zimbabwe, on the edge of the global
imperialist economic system, have very little freedom of manoeuvre.
>The most recent symbol of ineptitude is Mugabe's cynical use of land
>occupiers as pawns in his battle with the electoral opposition in Zimbabwe.
>In the 20 years of independence, Zimbabwe has failed to attack inequality
>in land. The white settlers own nearly all of the fertile land and Mugabe's
>land reform program--such as it is--has proceeded on the basis of cash
>compensation to the owners, who seized the land illegally to begin with. To
>pay the settlers, Mugabe has been reliant on stipends from Anglo-American
>imperialism. In order to receive cash, the Zimbabwean government has bent
>over backwards to adopt structural reforms proposed by the IMF and the
>World Bank. These "reforms" are propelling the landless masses in Zimbabwe
>to attack the white farms. All in all, Zimbabwe's problems can not be
>resolved within the framework of capitalism. For new forces for political
>change to take shape, it will be as a side-effect of the land seizures
>rather than any conscious effort by the discredited bureaucracy.
>If the period we are on the precipice of turns out to be something like the
>1930s and 1960s combined, Marxism will find that most of the answers to its
>opponents are contained in objective reality itself, which will be much
>more radical than anything we can dream of.
>
>As we enter that period, it will be very important for Marxists to be very
>open-minded and generous with those we have debated with in the past. A
>united front against the ruling class can not be made on the basis of some
>litmus test which requires all of the "politically correct" answers to a
>battery of questions. In general, actions will speak louder than words. It
>doesn't really matter what one thinks of Derrida as long as one understand
>that it is necessary to demonstrate against the IMF.
>
>
>Louis Proyect
>Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/
