Pinochet and the work of re-membering

Chris Burford cburford at gn.apc.org
Wed Dec 2 00:30:05 PST 1998


At 09:11 AM 12/1/98 +0000, you wrote:


>Chris Burford wrote-
>The integration of psycho-social forms of resistance and struggle with
>the
>class struggle against capitalism I submit is progressive and consistent
>
>with a true (non-dogmatic) approach to marxism. They are being
>increasingly
>used as world struggles intensify in their development and complexity,
>and
>they unite the people.
>
>where is this happening? and by whom?

It is happening not only in South Africa, and in northern Ireland, as I thought my post suggested.

It is happening now with the Pinochet case, to quote the Communist Manifesto, "under our very eyes"

The events that Louis P was so arrogant and confident as to dismiss as the work of a maverick Spanish judge on 19th October while he denounced me for idiocy, were contested first by the senior law officer of the Spanish Government. Yesterday the Spanish Foreign Minister stated that the legal process was "unstoppable". This morning the USA government after yesterday formally calling for serious consideration of the case for Pinochet to be returned to Chile, has released information about the atrocities in Chile for access by all those involved in the legal process.

And what is happening is that the need to remember these atrocities have become an event, that with the multiplying power of the media has become a need owned by the whole of global civil society, to which the politicians are adapting like the conscientious opportunists they are and act as transducers of the fundamental economic and political balance of forces, which are at present going through a massive shift of consciousness.

Left revisionists can sneer from the sidelines, they can claim that the proces of class struggle is somehow cut off and separate from the process by which society renews and reproduces itself in different ways in each generation, they can claim that marxism is a set of separate principles that must be defended as a dogma quite apart from the immediate emotions of millions of people. But they will remain on the sidelines.

The people of the world have decided to remember Pinochet and all he stands for, and call things to account.

Chris Burford

London.



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