I got tired of seeing my name in subject lines, so I changed the title. > > Max ripostes: >Silly shit indeed. . . . > That's assuming that the critics of the US/NATO war against Serbia all side with Serbian ethnic chauvinism, an assumption I've criticized again and again. Max, have you ever read Chomsky? > a) You cut out the part where I noted that others could wrap bandages or drive an ambulance. b) Yes I've read the dude and like him a lot. > In a separate missive, I wrote: >>> No, you're no "social fascist" . . . > Max responds: > I was not indulging in self-pity, at least not in this post. My reference was not to Manicheanism, but to a specific political posture promoted by Joe Stalin during his leftward-lurch and mirrored in the notion that liberals are as bad as or worse than conservatives from a socialist standpoint. < > > I haven't seen anyone put forth the "social fascism" thesis (i.e., the view that the folks immediately to the right of us on the political spectrum are as bad as or worse than the fascists or Nazis),>> See most any post (other than reprints from the media) from Louis, Carroll, Yoshie, Valis, or, periodically, Henwood. I agree that some of Nathan's stuff on socialism and Nato was a little scrambled, but that's his cross to bear. > BTW, I don't read Stalin's third period of "ultra-leftism" as really being leftist (whatever that means). Rather than using the simplistic "left" vs. "right" political spectrum, I would see that period as a matter of the tightening of bureaucratic control of the COMINTERN . . . Yes but the control manifested itself as prescriptions of different political lines at different times. There was one period when the prescription was to eschew all political alliances with non-communists and focus on building separate mass organizations, particularly the 'red unions' of the 1920's. There was also the brief period when the CP line re: Hitler was 'revolutionary defeatism,' conforming to isolationism. The strain of thinking to which I refer seems to have a lot in common with those approaches. > >To this has been added the new, even more retrograde, anti-Marxist, monochromatic historical view that capitalist was no advance over feudalism, or that within capitalism no meaningful progress has ever taken place.< > > I haven't seen that perspective put forth. To whose opinions are you > referring? > Louis in particular, some of the others (excluding Henwood) more faintly. > >The foreign policy extension of this view is revolutionary defeatism. . . > I'm sure someone has that perspective on pen-l. But I've also noticed a large number of other arguments put forth against that war. > Quite true. > . . . However, the DSA-types are not likely to do this is a radical way; they're gradualists (and mostly careerists). > Unless you've taken a census of all DSAers and read their minds, I don't think you should apply blanket characterizations like this. There are academic marxist careerists, policy wonk careerists, journalistic careerists, etc. etc. Reference to others' motives is not really the point, more often than not. > BTW, Max my spell-checker told me to replace your last name with "seasick." Note that I didn't do so. You could have done worse. mbs
