good news?

Chris Burford cburford at gn.apc.org
Tue Oct 20 00:03:57 PDT 1998


At 08:55 AM 10/19/98 -0400, you wrote:
>>Like others, I of course welcome this move, but I repeat this is nothing to
>>do with tailing. Let us for example at the same time condemn the way the
>>USA has attempted to block the setting up of the International Court.
>>
>>Yes this is about the enforcement of bourgeois right globally. But there
>>are contradictions in that. We should in concrete cases try to show the
>>limitations of bourgeois right, and argue for socially accountable justice.
>>In a way my linked post on the Nigerian fire tries to do this too.
>>
>>Chris Burford
>
>This is completely idiotic. The arrest of Pinochet has nothing to do with
>"global governance" or "third ways" or any other reformist schema that
>Burford would cover with Leninist-jargon wallpaper. You are dealing with a
>maverick judge in Spain, who seems to be some kind of combination of Ramsey
>Clark and Jim Garrison.

An attempt to dismiss the contribution of another correspondent on a repeated basis as "completely idiotic" does not reflect well on Lou, or his grasp of a marxist use of criticism. It is the politics of exclusion, and eventually will not win in an networking environment.

Lenin, whom Lou seems to present in an idealised sense as a source of correctness, argued that it was always better to take an opponent at his best. Lou repeatedly tries to dismiss opponents at their worst, and hopes others will accept that judgement.

It is unlikely logically that anyone is "completely" idiotic. An argument may be wrong, hypocritical, irrelevant, serving a different class or strata, to that it purports, but it usually has some reference to reality.

Lou clearly does not understand the argument presented here and therefore dismisses it. It does as little for his credibility as his ridiculous assertion that "neo-liberalism does not exist".

Lou has a problem about reforms. I have used this list to discuss the relevance of reforms on a global scale. Lou implies this is reformist by definition. Yet why does he also for example draw attention to a New Yorker article on Bretton Woods. Was that not a reform? Is that subject not coming up again in the context of reforms? Does anyone seriously imaging that if the world financial system was reformed to take into account better some of the aims of Bretton Woods, capitalism would be finished, or that such reforms will not be carried out by capitalists, in the interests of capitalism to attempt to stabilise and consolidate it? Does Lou imagine that no reforms will occur? Does he think it revolutionary to have nothing to do with reforms at all? Dismissing of another persons argument as "completely idiotic" just reveals his sectarian difficulty in thinking dialectically.

About the global agenda of bourgeois democratic rights I cannot emphasise too much how this is the banner under which progressive global capitalism is marching. Individual characters like Blair, Cook, Clinton or this Spanish judge are not just individuals, they are attempting to march to the same ideological tune. The advantages and disadvantages of this to the working people of the world need to be analysed dialectically.

I am not going to criticise Lou as being completely idiotic for describing this as the actions of one "maverick" judge because he does not see the pattern I see. I do think he is arrogant and foolish to dismiss a counter argument as "completely" idiotic. The fact that we are in a situation where news is constantly unfolding and it is now known that the Spanish government is using its attorney general to try to block the judge, does not alter the fundamental relevance of the case I am arguing. Fine if Lou is not convinced about it or challenges it. But I would have thought for his own self-respect he would show some judgement about the personalised way he makes such challenges.

Chris Burford

London



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list