> For Protesters Today, It's Marks, Not Marx
> By Frank Ahrens
> Washington Post Staff Writer
> Friday, April 20, 2001; Page A01
> <snip>
Posted by Ian Murray:
>ChuckO,
>I know you're deep undercover somewhere in the fractal called Canada but
can >you refute the drivel on violence in this piece or have a DC friend
e-harass >Ahrens for the lies?
Posted by me:
The most odious thing about this article is the implication that because the movement's concerns are "diverse" (sic) and "non-ideological" (sic), then its program isn't (unconsciously or consciously) anti-capitalist. Or maybe I should welcome this article -- it smacks of the ruling class' worried attempts to convince itself that the movement's program is reformist, when in fact most of the radical needs it puts forward are unsatifiable within the limits of the system -- whether the activists know it or not. Even though the kids may not be carrying around copies of the Little Red Book or Das Kapital (and thank God for that -- such pseudo-vangaudist stunts are so easily picked off by the culture industry in the form of Che Guevera beer and Mumia t-shirts), you ain't gonna get an attenuation of the work week or a repaying of the ecological debt the North owes the South without an attenuation of the incessant drive toward (as Yoshie would put it) M-C-M'.
John Gulick
P.S. These laughable middlebrow profressors putting together their books on the composition and aims of the movement make me puke -- as if a movement orientation toward such nominally reformist norms as "justice, fairness" etc. somehow can be contained within the framwork of side agreements & capital- state-labor-NGO accords. Dialecticians these vulgar empiricist scholars are not.