Actually, I have been a subscriber to DEBATE since its inception and am about to renew. In the context of South African politics, it is one of the most important voices of the left-wing alternative to the SACP and the ANC. They have shown remarkable courage and integrity in denouncing the neoliberal drift of the post-apartheid regime.
Of course, if Mark wants to find references to 'state' and 'power' in a left-wing publication, I can refer him to the tiny Trotskyite group in South Africa. This ideological current has a long history in South Africa and has managed to isolate itself from the genuine class struggle. It is really not too hard to establish one's credentials as a "Bolshevik" in South Africa today. All you have to do is rail away at the Mandela administration as if it were April 1917.
There's only one problem, however. In April 1917 the Bolsheviks were a mass party, while today's version are teeny-weeny purist sects. It is important to understand that we need a real diesel locomotive to change history. Lionel trains, while having a certain charm, don't do much good.
As everybody knows, I am very close to Mark on some of the core political questions of the era and will at some point work on a book with him which will pull together his research on energy and some of the things that I have been investigating. Where I part company with him is on the immediate relevance of reform-versus-revolution question.
We are not in a prerevolutionary situation in Great Britain or the United States. So to call for the overthrow of capitalism is of very little practical use. I have very low esteem for Trotskyism nowadays, but there is one thing I will always be grateful for and that is the dictum of James P. Cannon, the founder of the American movement, who said, "The art of politics is knowing WHAT TO DO NEXT."
Our problem is that Marxists are generally clueless on this question. They are content to make the formally correct observation that capitalism has to be overthrown. The problem with a "maximalist" approach to politics is that it doesn't really give you a handle on what do do next.
One of the reasons I am so preoccupied with American Indian politics in the US is that they relate distinctly to these sorts of questions of what to do next. For example, the Blackfeet of Canada and the United States have declared a confederacy and this challenges the right of two powerful imperialist nations ruling over them to determine who is a citizen. This struggle does not involve guns or the question of state power, but it is one of the most decisive for the current period.
By the same token, the Marxist current in the Teamsters Union have a big challenge in front of them. How do they counter Jimmy Hoffa Jr.'s bid for the presidency? If Hoffa wins, the class struggle in the US will be set back for years. In their strategy meetings, these Marxists will have very little use for questions such as those posed in April 1917.
The problem, however, is that as long as the Marxist movement continues to make ultraleft sectarian mistakes of the sort that destroyed our movement in the 1970s and 80s, our April 1917 will be delayed ad infinitum.
Louis Proyect
(http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)