the party in Millaud

Carrol Cox cbcox at ilstu.edu
Sat Jul 1 16:40:32 PDT 2000


Joanna Sheldon wrote:


> Carrol,
>
> You're so right, we must beware of false friends. What I worry about is
> that we'll have folks on the barricades (should we be so lucky as ever to
> find ourselves on barricades) checking everyone's credentials: "Are you or
> have you ever been a member of the Republican party?"

There is an almost unavoidable pendulum in left movements as swings to the left (or right) are over-corrected by counterswings to the right (or left).

The doom of all left movements of the past has been eventually to carry one of those corrections so far that it's not recoverable. Apparently that happened in China, for example, in the later stages of the Cultural Revolution. I don't think there is any magic formula to protect against this -- partly because in many cases it is forces beyond control by the left that constrain its freedom of motion. Perhaps the main difference between Cuba and Vietnam has nothing whatever to do with the subjective choices made within those movements but to the partial freedom Cuba gained by being an island. Chomsky has argued that it has been deliberate u.s. policy to force socialist regimes to adopt an authoritarian internal policy.

Perhaps some of your politics rubbed off on Bove. It's possible. But in the past radicalized petty producers have been as apt to move radically right as radically left.


> What shall we do, turn
> them away because they favour Occitan over French, because they think women
> should take a back seat,

The current "trend" in China began with sexist attacks on Mao's widow. I agree that one can fear "trends" too much (there is a famous Lenin quote which I forget right now which is used to draw ultra-fine lines) -- but some trends (and forcing women to take a back seat is one of them) have a quite consistent record over a long period of leading to most unfortunate ends.

Carrol



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