which I myself regard as flexible and relevant to the political challenges
that exist in developed capitalist societies. >>
I want to thank Chris for a positive and helpful intervention. Believe me, I did not come to the LBO list to do battle with Yoshie and Heartfield over Rwanda and Serbia. [Indeed I keep on trying to figure out how I got sucked into this kind of exchange.] Rather, after a couple of looks at the archives (which seem to have now disappeared into cyberspace for some reason) over time and another couple of weeks of lurking, it seemed to me to be a center of some intelligent and interesting discourse on the left. It looked like a forum from which someone like me could learn something, a forum in which ideas that related to actual political struggles, and not blind dogmas, could be tested and sharpened. There is enough diversity of views and common respect, enough grounding in actual political work, to create a healthy debate. The back and forth on positions vis-a-vis presidential politics in the US, for example, has done a reasonable job of grappling with the various choices an intelligent American left could make, given its general marginality to that political stage.
<< In left lists dominated by subscribers from the USA, there is bound to be a
strong tradition, stemming from resistance to the Vietnam war, against any
aggression and interference by US hegemonism. In short hand and
speed-reading, opposing the US is automatically likely to be an authentic
position.
This IMO obscures the inevitability of the emergence of global government,
and the fact that the imperialist powers will usually take initiatives in
their own hegemonic interests, but they may appeal to higher ideals that
have some concrete reality. >>
I think this is right on the point. But especially in the post-Cold War world, this reflexive, unthinking opposition to the US in world politics which marks a certain strain of American sectarianism has become more and more politically counterproductive and incoherent. It excuses the failures of the US to do what it should do because it would require "intervention" of some sort, which is by definition always wrong, and it even ends up opposing the US when it takes action in a positive fashion, such as participating in sanctions against the apartheid regime in South Africa, because such actions must also be, by definition, a "ploy" to maintain imperialist dominion and hegemony. And the corollary of this rule is that whomever is in opposition to the US deserves, be definition, support, leading to movements in solidarity with the Slobbos of the world.
Since the rule is invariable and absolute, analysis of the concrete situation is anathema: just apply the rule. If one were in a debate open to investigating what actually happened in Rwanda, it would be easy enough to point out that where was a UN force in Rwanda at the start of the genocide, that they were fully knowledgeable about the plans for the genocide, reporting them to their superiors, and the and that they were ordered to do nothing. All the US had to do was move to have the UN force act, and to provide it with necessary support. After all, the forces of the Hutu genocide and the government were so weak and disorganized that they were defeated by a relatively untested RPF guerilla army in a matter of weeks -- but not until one million were dead. But under this rule, we can never criticize the US for inaction.
And the twists and turns of an analysis that depends solely upon establishing some sort of relationship to the US -- dependent upon/in opposition to -- really shows just how thoughtless the application of this rule is. Take Kabila: he starts out as someone who had historic ties to Lumumba and Che Guevara, both who struggled against US imperialism, so he is... a good guy. Wait a minute: he teams up with Uganda and Rwanda, who are instruments of US imperialism (Uganda took aid from the US, and sent military officers, including Kagame, to the US for training), so he is... a bad guy (even though he is still fighting against the greatest client of imperialism in central Africa, Mobutu). Whoops, he decided to ditch Uganda and Rwanda, so he is... a good guy. Or look at how all the arguments linking Rwanda to US imperialism rely upon the Rwandan link to Uganda: Kagame comes to the US for training as an Ugandan military officer, the RPF organizes inside Uganda, the US gives aid to Uganda, etc. But now Rwanda and Uganda have fallen out, are backing different factions in opposition to Kabila, and their armies are fighting inside the Congo -- so who is the "puppet" of US imperialism, Uganda or Rwanda? (Remind anyone of that great moment in internationalism communism: Nazi Germany is the enemy; whoops, Hitler and Stalin signed a pact, giving the Soviet Union the Baltic states and eastern Poland, so those war mongerers who want to fight Nazi Germany are the enemy; uh, sorry, the Nazis just invaded the Soviet Union, so we are back to fighting the Nazi enemy again. Too bad that all along, every step of the way, the Nazis were the enemy.)
I suppose it is fitting that such debates end with the casting about of the epithet "anti-Communist." This is used, in mirror fashion to the way reactionaries use the epithet "Communist," as some sort of imaginary trump for a bankrupt argument. (As in, so you support national health insurance... you must be a Communist.) You are right, it is frustrating, and my reaction is to answer the way I would answer to harping Sparts: "yes, I am a sell-out social democrat; now can you leave us alone so we can discuss serious politics?"
Leo Casey United Federation of Teachers 260 Park Avenue South New York, New York 10010-7272 (212-598-6869)
Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never has, and it never will. If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightening. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its waters. -- Frederick Douglass --