Hans, do Hillier/Buttler have some secret parallel list where they hold the
*real* discussion, as opposed to the vacuous imbecilism of their
front-organisation, the marxist-leninist-take-me-for-an-idiot-list?
Mark Jones
http://www.egroups.com/group/CrashList
- Original Message -
From: "Hans Ehrbar" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Thursday, June 29, 2000 3:57 PM
Subject: [PEN-L:20939] On Mark to Rod, was Re: Re: re: energy
On Wed, 28 Jun 2000 18:10:45 -0500, Carrol Cox
[EMAIL PROTECTED] said:
So unless you really do agree with Hans Ehrbar on the need
for an elitist putsch to stop global warming, you had
better give some thought to how that mass support can be
(beginning now) marshalled
It is not my view that an elitist putsch can stop global
warming. On the contrary, only those who experience the
exploitation and oppression of capitalism by their own body
and soul every day are able to put up the consistent fight
against capitalism that is needed. An appeal to the
intellect that the world is burning will not change the
members of PEN-L or any other email list into the devoted,
disciplined, selfless fighters which are able to overturn
the system. Thinking that it can or that it ought to is
idealism. Such fighters exist today, capitalism creates
lots of them every day with its cruelty, but in the leading
industrial countries they will always be in a minority. We
intellectuals have to join the organizations of these
committed workers and help them write a consistent programme
how to avoid ecological catastrophe by a world wide
proletarian revolution, and establish a minority
dictatorship which will carry out this programme with
Stalinist methods.
You will be surprised how many liberals with support such a
proletarian-based movement once it is big enough. Therefore
my advice is: join any proletarian communist party, whether
it be the Worker's World Party (my personal favorite at the
moment), the CPUSA, the SWP, etc., whatever, and help them
reach more workers or improve their theory. For those who
cannot function in such an environment, an alternative might
be to use your computer skills to build a new internet-based
international which combines all these scattered proletarian
organizations. Sven Buttler and Jim Hillier's
marxist-leninist-list is working in this direction. Or use
your computer skills to write the software for a
computer-based planned economy, which could then perhaps be
adopted by countries like Cuba, using Cockshott and Cottrell's
"Towards a New Socialism" as the starting point. Whatever you
do, think big. Stop diddling around.
I am appending a message I sent to the bhaskar list on June 12
which explains more of the theory behind this.
Hans Ehrbar.
Sunday morning I sent the following message to Louis Proyect's
marxism list and to leninist-international. I think it might
also be of interest to the Bhaskar list, since it was
inspired by RB in at least two respects:
(1) Bhaskars criticism of Marx that he, following Hegel, put
too much emphasis on internal, at the expense of external
contradictions (the ecological limits of the earth are an
external contradiction of capitalism, and Marx's dictum in
the preface that "the problem itself arises only when the
material conditions for its solution are already present or
are at least in the course of formation" is only valid for
internal, not for external contradictions).
(2) Bhaskar's repudiation of the fact-value distinction
which encourages me to say here that only those who truly
hate the capitalist system have a correct grasp of its
reality.
I have not yet received any responses for this posting on
the other two lists. Something tells me that I might get a
response on this list here.
Capitalism makes profits by the exploitation of labor.
Those who create all the surplus value, on which capital
depends in order to function, see their lives reduced to
drudgery, without enough time or money to care for their
children, without access to proper medical care, see their
neighborhoods blighted, their youth terrorized by police,
denied their life chances and a decent education, driven
into drugs. Every day they are reminded of the contempt the
system has for their lives and everything that is dear to
them. These people get to the point where every molecule in
their body hates the system. They are also the ones that
can overturn the system, because capital needs them,
organizes them, teaches them hard work and discipline, and
at the same time makes implacable enemies out of them. They
are willing to face bullets and torture and their own deaths
and continue fighting after 1000 defeats. This is what it
takes to overturn the system. This is the vanguard which
needs to organize itself world wide, even if they are a
