I too prefer campaigns whose initiative is not dependent of bourgeois parties. The lines of demarcation however are that it is demonstrably unmarxist of LP to denounce any support for a bourgeois party under any conditions. And I think technical work has to be done to make certain reforms attainable goals.
LP:
Right now there
>should be a priority on:
>
>1) Confronting right-wing violence: gays, Asian immigrants, blacks,
>abortion services providers, are all increasingly coming under violent
>attack. "Same boat" coalitions should be organized to drive back the
>right-wing attacks.
So long as they never make demands of one of the bourgeois parties? ...
See LP of Nov 7th:
>>>>
Bourgeois polticians have all sorts of differences over abortion
rights, gays in the military, the amount of pressure to put on Cuba, etc.
These are not the sort of "contradictions" that Marxism deals with, since
they are not rooted in opposing class interests
<<<
>
>2) Defending trade union democracy: The impending Hoffa victory in the
>Teamsters would turn back the clock. Marxists in both the teamsters union
>and in other progressive unions should work together to build a
>class-struggle left-wing that incorporates the gains of the Ron Carey
>presidency but without the ties to the scuzzy Democrat Party that got him
>in trouble.
I see trade unionism as now of limited strategic value. Trade unions are important organs of resistance to capital but they are essentially bourgeois.
>
>3) Defending indigenous rights: Makah, Blackfoot and Navajo are all
>involved in extremely militant actions in defense of their traditions.
>There should be support from the broader progressive movement.
True but not centrally challenging capitalism.
>
>These are the sorts of items that should get prioritized at conferences of
>Marxist or radical organizations. Your grotesque ideas about "financial
>reform" are the stuff of liberal think-tanks. At least when Max Sawicky
>proposes them, he doesn't try to justify them with quotes from Marx or Lenin.
Abusive remarks about grotesqueness doesn't render LP's ultra-left views any more profound.
>>He has failed to take the debate forward by
>>arguing how it is possible to support a bourgeois party on particular
>>issues without promoting illusions in them.
>
>Are you serious? Bourgeois politicians in the north were verbal supporters
>of desegregation, but it took the confrontational, passive resistance
>tactics of SNCC and similar groups to actually beat down the door of Jim
>Crow. These very same bourgeois politicians regarded SNCC--and Dr. King for
>that matter--as "extremists." I advocate this kind of extremism. Marx and
>Lenin were extremists as well. You are a fabian Socialist which is no sin.
>Quoting Marx to buttress Fabian socialism is a sin.
At the risk of giving LP another sleepless night I am serious of course. Certain bourgeois parties at certain times may present the possibility of reforms but should not be relied on. Really this is becoming repetitious essentially because of LP's difficulty in coping with a contradiction.
>
>>Does the technical nature of finance mean that is cannot be a target for
>>progressive campaigns?
>
>I have not objected to the technical nature of financial reform. I have
>simply stated that it has nothing to do with the class struggle. The
>imperialists got together at Bretton Woods immediately after WWII in order
>to reform the international financial system. They wanted to impose
>institutional controls that could prevent the sort of wildfire contagion
>that destroyed international trade in the 1930s.
And wanted to avoid the spread of "communism".
Nothing to do with the class struggle indeed!
>As the WWII economies
>gained strength in the 1960s and 70s, there was increased competition and
>the Bretton Woods agreements were superseded by the new, more open approach
>to capital flows. That in combination with large-scale automation has
>produced a more unstable financial environment. They want to reduce the
>instability. That is what George Soros has been arguing. It is essentially
>an intra-capitalist discussion. The working-class parties have to expose
>the machinations of all these gangsters, as in the spirit of a recent
>Castro speech where he described the problems as "genetic."
Of course crises are inevitable under capitalism, as noted in the Fidel Castro passages. That does not mean it is wrong to try to socialise the market, in the phrase Doug Henwood has recently used. Perhaps Louis would like to start being abusive to Doug on his own list, for promoting illusions in the possibility of the reform of capitalism.
>> A revolution occurred in Albania, a couple
>>of years ago, but needed much more informed progressive knowledge about how
>>to manage the financial system in the interests of working people rather
>>than the interests of capital.
>
>This is a joke, right?
Of course it is not a joke. The pressures of free market capitalism make it very difficult to have social democracy or socialism in one country any more.
LP is simply charging at Aunt Sallies if he alleges my argument above means...
>You think that what the Albanian workers needed was
>advice on how to manage the capitalist finances of their ruined country.
What a waste of band width to have to try to argue your case by repeatedly misrepresenting your protagonist.
> Many others were incorrectly advised that an endowment mortgage was
>>in their interests. From afar Louis Proyect may say that Gordon Brown's
>>plans to impose a financial and securities regulatory body on the City of
>>London, is a mere reform of capital of no interest to the working class or
>>working people. Ditto for the plans for regulation within the European
>>Union. But Brown has only been able to move forward on this because of the
>>wave of public opinion from working people.
>
>I'm sorry, old stick, our minds just work differently. My idea of a reform
>in the financial arena is to impose steep fines against banks that "red
>line" the black community, or to enact laws that would protect the right of
>personal bankruptcy.
Our minds do indeed work differently. LP wants to be seen with noted socialists. I want to see changes in the world system of capitalism. But to the extent we are engaging with each other here at all in any meaningful way, I would say that ghettoisation of urban communities is a function of the capitalist land system. As I have plugged away in the thread on Hong Kong, I think it would be more fundamental to abolish private property in the ownership of land than to try to punish the banks. *How* would you punish the banks? Obviously not firing squad. So what should be done? And what if that just drove capital away? Should they be regulated? No that cannot be right, because LP would start sounding like a Fabian socialist.
>>On a global scale the acceptance by capitalism through its adminstrators
>>like Brown and Clinton, that there has to be reform, is of course partly a
>>reform that capitalists are considering very much from their own interests
>>alone, but it is ultra-leftist to say that the protests and refusal of
>>millions of people to accept the blind hand of the market in destroying
>>their lives, is also part of the balance of forces.
>
>What socialists must provide is an analysis of WHY capitalism is destroying
>people's lives. In Indonesia, for example, socialists should be hammering
>away at a basic class analysis and making sure that ethnic hatreds are
>overcome. Meanwhile Burford is obsessed with the rising Hong Kong stock
>market. Could it be more obvious that he is living in his own little world?
Well I think this is indeed a clear case of projection. LP is creating his own social world which may be of intuitive relevance to a tiny fraction of the population. Whether what world capitalists called "contagion" could be contained, affects the lives not just of millions but of billions, and ealier this year Hong Kong was on the front line.
As for providing an analysis of WHY capitalism is destroying people's lives, what is the mystery? Millions can see on their television screens the arbitrariness and turmoil of an economic system out of control. The question of why the crises of capitalism *disproportionately hit third world people* does need much more analysis. But for that LP and others would have to join more into the debate on the unequal distribution of Value on a global scale. But LP has never shown much interest in value theory.
>>For a real opening in the interests of working people, a lot of work has to
>>be done now by progressive intellectuals. I called through this list for
>>left wing seminars to be set up speedily on alternative reforms of the
>>world financial system.
>
>Perhaps you talking to the wrong people. There is a post-Keynsian
>mailing-list which is filled to the rafters with other people who have
>meliorative approaches to the cancerous capitalist system.
I am quite content that what I am raising here is well within the range of issues covered by the remit of LBO-talk. If LP thinks I am talking to the wrong person in addressing correspondence to him, I think he is probably right. Why does he not just skip my posts? From his description of myself I can hardly be worth it. I will not lose any sleep over that.
>Louis's attempt to characterise my position as
>>*automatically* tailing behind the bourgeoisie will convince fewer and
>>fewer people. Some of the more serious economists on this list are no doubt
>>already looking at the fine print of the official statements and discussing
>>among themselves how they could do better.
>
>Frankly, I don't give a rat's ass what Max Sawicky or Brad Delong have to
>say about financial reform.
It is unlikely that they will lose sleep either.
>It is only when people start quoting Marx and
>Lenin in order to lend authority to reformist schemas that I get miffed.
If the issue of reforms cannot be discussed from an explicitly marxist point of view, why does LP moderate a list called "marxism"?
>>It has been suggested to me in a well meant private communication that
>>Louis just gets out of the wrong side of the bed every so often. I do not
>>think that is the case.
>
>Interesting. I got a private communication yesterday that suggested your
>problems are that you have sectarian habits, but instead of nagging people
>about the need to form Soviets this afternoon, you pester them for months
>in the same spirit to endorse NATO bombing in former Yugoslavia, or other
>lamebrained class-collaborationist notions. In other words you have the
>fanaticism of the "vanguardist" married to the politics of Anthony Giddens.
>Quite a toxic combination.
What Louis clipped out of this quote is my view that his personalised and antagonistic style of struggle is linked to his idealism and moralism, which is not marxism.
This thread title was originally about LP's determination to see nothing progressive in the fall of Gingrich, and to belittle the struggle that went into this, on the grounds that it was automatically and only tailist.
It is relevant that as a matter of principle he thinks marxists in the USA and UK during the second world war should have opposed the war between 1941 and 1945 because it is wrong to support one bourgeoisie against another.
Chris Burford
London.