Re: apologies

[Waistline2]

>I am not trying to insult you by characterizing you, but to put my finger on a dilemma. I think it is related to something wrong in the way you approach the relationship between theory and practice . . . .The working people you talk with may be will not recognize the word "hegemony" but they will recognize an agitational equivalent of it. What is the US doing going round playing biggest kid on the block? What is it like for the supplies troops who have just been ambushed and interviewed on Iraqi television? What is it like for the black sergeant who threw grenades into tents in Camp Pennsylvania two nights ago? Why does CNN this morning still report his motivation as a mystery?

>What are the feelings of black, or other, members of the US military about what they are doing policing the world? Why does someone like Akbar turn to a reactive ideology (I say reactive to avoid the dismissive connotations of reactionary, although it means the same literally) like being a Black Muslim. <

Reply

You are basically correct in putting your finger on the dilemma. The societal role of the US government, or rather multi-national state of the United States of North America, does not rivet on its bigness or playing the role of the biggest kid on the block. The role of the multi-national state of the United States of North America is fundamentally a question of conduct driven by property relations. The organ of violence in the hands of the historically evolved Anglo-American bourgeoisie is the international hangmen of revolution and the enemy of the peoples of earth. That is the point. Not hegemony or bigness but rather the rule of a class.


>If you assume a mainly theoretical, pedagogical approach to politics, while this is not always wrong, you will not see that agitational work can provide a bridge between theory and practice, testing theory but also enriching it.<

Reply

I proceed from an assumption that there does not exist a "bridge between theory and practice," - as such, by definition. Practical politics deal with the doctrine of conducting the social struggle, not theory of social development. The doctrine of Marx and Lenin proceed from a different axis than the theory. Both require thinking but one must admit that Lenin's doctrine of the "party of a new type" does not arise from a fundamental analysis of commodity production. The party of a new type - the Leninist party, arose as a doctrine of the class struggle at a certain stage of evolution of the social struggle during the period of transition from agricultural to industrial relations. The question Lenin posed was how to create an organization of revolutionaries unified on the basis of seizing the state power - the civic authority.

Theory is said to be the law system of unfolding development or a process. By definition this rivets on abstractions. For instance, there is the materialist conception of history, which is not practically related to the doctrine espousing the party of a new type, or the need at this juncture for a broad class party in America.

It is interesting that you would raise the case of the solider involved in fragging and using the term "black Muslim" and "what are the feelings of black, or other, members of the US military about what they (US government) are doing policing the world?"  

Here the question of theory and doctrine becomes paramount. First of all the world is going to be policed as long as "the state" exists as a historically evolved social phenomenon. Theory informs me on this proposition. The feelings of blacks are almost identical to those sections of the Anglo-American people who occupy similar social positions in the working class.

This can only be understood on the basis of history. There are variations but the black masses who are working class, not simply black, did not object to Clinton's bombing of black people in other parts of earth. Nor was there any registered outrage over Clinton's Eastern European policy by "black people" in America. It gets worse. Clinton's administration did more to hurt the mass of African Americans - by way of his welfare reform, than all the "reactionaries" over the past 30 years.  Clinton was the African American people, "main man" in terms of the specifics of American Ideology and politics.

My point is that your assertion is outside the indigenousness Marxism (Marx theory) that evolved in America, because it is classless. In terms of doctrine, the forms of oppression they have faced historically govern the national character of the African American peoples movement. Why millions of African Americans would reject the doctrine of Christianity is no surprise given the fact that Christians enslaved them as a people in America. I thought everyone on earth understood this. Now the question is not really why Blacks gravitate towards Islam, but the role of religion in social life.

There is something to your brand of Marxist that caters to the bourgeoisie. I cannot be accused of this because I try and really stick to the materialist conception of history, the mode of production in material life, its transitions and why they must be the context in which we act out our lives. Nor do I confuse the doctrine of the class struggle with theory.


>In another post your referred to your excess passion apologetically again and commented on the decisive thing in the fall of the Nazi army in front of Stalingrad:


<What was decisive about the battle for Stalingrad was that it was the turning point in <preserving public property relations in the socially necessary means of production.>


>Here my reaction is that I do not understand how you relate the abstract and the concrete. This feels to me like an abstract assertion without any obvious intervening concrete links with the complexity of what actually happened.<

Reply

Well, in explaining events in Iraq you basically stated that Saddamn might find his Stalingrad. I am saying Saddamn cannot every find his Stalingrad. This turning point in WWII was not simple a reversal of relative strength between the Nazi's and Sovietism, but a turning point in world property relations. There is no comparison between the heroic and monumental battle of the Soviet proletariat and what is taking place in Iraq. A degenerate bourgeois ruling class in Iraq is in combat with an equally degenerate bourgeois ruling class of America.

Here is the proposition. There is an anti-war movement given a general world character -  definition, by the assertions of USNA led imperialism. Marxist agitate on the basis of real issues but have among other tasks, the spread of Marxist theory and doctrine. We cannot create a social movement. Capital does this for us. The various leaders of the social movement have to be imbued with the spirit and theory of the materialist conception of history.

Here is the problem again. Eighty to 90% of African Americans oppose the Bush administration, and this is rooted in the political history of the Republican Party since Roosevelt. Given this reality, why are not the anti-war demonstrations at leas 50% black? My point is the form of a social movement is governed by a different set of factors than the basis of the social movement. Social movements are continually generated on the basis of the changes in the means of production, even when the form of the social movement lags behind its essence.

Here is the problem again. Marxist in Iraq can properly speak of USNA hegemony, but no Marxist in the Imperial centers of the world total social capital can speak in such terms, in their polemic - not their agitation, and not immediately go over to a section of the bourgeoisie. Polemics are not leaflets.

>Most of us on these lists could be accused of just thinking and writing and doing little, so I do not want to ask an unfair question, but how do your personal passions relate to this present war, and then in turn with your theories. They may be valuable, and not something for which you should apologise.<

Reply

I have been opposed to all wars on the part of imperial states since 1963. The content of my work is determined by what I am doing, where I am working at a given juncture in life. If I where in the diplomatic corps of an imperial power and a Marxist, my field of work would be limited.


>Also technically, as someone who writes excessively long contributions like you, they are not best designed to engage in dialogue. They have the merit of presenting a reasonably coherent case, which people cannot take cheap potshots at, and which as it were establish some intellectual territory. However they may often be skimmed over even by people who would otherwise be sympathetic.<

Reply

Well I have the merit of having been elected the highest union representative in my place of employment of 30 years and other organizations over the past 30 years to numerous to count. It is no secret that I was Committeeman and Chairman of the Shop Committee at Mound Road Engine - Chrysler Group, Local 51. There was of course Exectuvie Board member of the old American Writers Congress, Board member of the Theology in Americas, Board member of the Coalition of Black Trade Unionist -Detroit, Equal Rights Congress, Editor of the Southern Advocate, Editor of the Black Student United Front and Board Member, League of Revolutionary Black Workers, Communist League, Communist Labor Party and most folk seem to understand me in real easy terms.

The real issue is that I am not interest in the disgruntled individual - as a Marxist theorist. Everyone has a beef on one level or another. I am not trying to create a social movement. Capital creates the spontaneous movement because people have to eat and maintain. Sure I will lend a certain organizational expertise, but that is not what my mission is about.

My singular interest as a Marxist theorist - not a trade union secretary, is the spread and propagation of Marxism and defeating the legal Marxism that has dominated the imperial centers for 40 years.

Early in your reply you comment:

>Yes it is true that in a sense, as Lenin argued in What is to be done? Ideas have to come to the working masses/class from outside. But fundamentally ideas are not purely abstract divorced from real material interests and class struggle. <

Well I have a totally different point of view. Fundamental ideas like the concept of "the mode of production in material life" requires study and reading books and can never be attained from practice. Engel's made this pretty clear when he said, "Since socialism has become a science, it has to be pursued as a science, i.e. studied." Someone put Marx in your hand and this must never be forgotten.

Further Pen-L is rightly an on-line service for intellectuals. And this includes working class intellectuals. What the workers need is not lessons in "practice" but intellectual insight into the movement of society. Here is an example of "practical theoretical Marxism:"

"When something fundamental to a process changes, everything dependent upon and part of the process must in turn change. How we go about securing our daily means of living has changed and is changing. The changes in the mode of production cause society to change and undergo social revolution. The economic revolution always in the last instance drives the social revolution. At one point in American history the manufacturing capacity of the North outran the consuming capacity of the slave holding South and social revolution broke out to change the mode of production in the South. At another juncture the economic revolution in agriculture - the tractor and other modern equipment cause the class of sharecroppers to be displaced and social revolution erupted to integrate these sharecroppers into society as industrial workers.

Today, the computer, digitalized production processes and advance robotics are changing the way we live and work and causing social revolution. The cause of the social revolution is not to be located in the minds and heart of men and women, but in the quiet changes that takes place in the material power of production. Such is the meaning of the social revolution of the working class."

The above has taken considerable years to formulate as doctrine. Every worker in every country on earth can acquire the same understand from the above no matter what language it is translated into. Marx did the fundamental theoretical work.

This is what the advance fighters generated on the basis of the social revolution must be told and taught. The class itself has to be led by a body politic that formulates its urgent demands as class demands. Two very different arenas of work. Practice?

Gimme a break. Someone has to write the pamphlets and on line commentary. For now I have had enough of union elections, which I am rather decent at winning, organizational positions in social organizations where I tend to always be on the leading body; editing newspapers and leaflets - which I do not do badly, and other practical work. Actually, a part of the practical work I have been engaging for the past 18 months is the crest of the water wars in Detroit, which was written about on Marxline maybe 14 months ago. Our infrastructure is in collapse. Where I live there is no police department or fire department and the pension fund is broke - no checks. I tell the people the truth. Capitalism is a bitch.

Most of my life is teaching and this involves books, theory and the occasional visit to the museum. As drug counselor in the past, I would load up the clients into my mini-van and we would go to the museum and they would get a Marxist interpretation of history. I believe you misunderstand Lenin's "What Is To Be Done." 

The anti-war movement offers an opportunity for the rapid spread of Marxism. Its spread is a question of the art of spreading. People we talk to want to know how we come to our conclusions and this is going to require a new generation of Marxist propaganda. Why?

Because, when fundamental things change, that which is dependent and lives based on the fundamental must in turn change. Here is the real dialectic.


Melvin P.