Mark Jones wrote:
>
> Carrol Cox
>
> >It
> > tends, then, _not_ to feature all those elements that are opposed to and
> > block any such unity -- e.g., most centrally imperialism,
>
> Is there a different pen-l in some parallel universe? Because in the one I
> inhabit, the whole argument is about imperialism, q.v.
>
Mark, you tend to assume sort of an automatic 'translation' of fundamental theory into daily practice, somewhat as though to learn the temperature at which to bake bread one would consult a study in quantum mechanics. The perspective on imperialism in the current debate on pen-l concerns fundamental understanding of the nature of capitalism, of which imperialism is of course a central part, but only a part. In over a hundred posts we haven't got that straight yet on pen-l, so I won't pause to explain or argue it here.
But we have _not_ been discussing revolutionary strategy and tactics in the first decade of the 21st century in the United States. That is the issue the Alec is raising, and while one's theory of capitalism (whether Marx's historical theory or your moralist and technological theory) obviously will, in the long run, make a great deal of difference, it makes very little difference immediately.
For example, you and I have no difference whatever, so far as I know, on Yugoslavia, NATO, WTO, East Timor, China, Iraq, Palestine (I do plan to return to the debate that David McReynolds temporarily crushed by his resort to the rhetorical practice known as poisoning the wells of discourse). You seem (repeat, _seem_ from the outside) to have a longing for a neat form of what the Chinese called two-line struggle. But that practice was worked out in the context of an ongoing mass engagement, and the "two-lines" were always reflected in and arose in respect to immediate questions of tactics and strategy, never on levels of theory not immediately posed by the struggle. And rather central to the success of the Chinese Revolution (so far as it was a success) was the practice of "letting contradictions ripen" -- that is, at any one stage of struggle, certain contradictions, no matter how deep, were "overlooked" as it were. Somehow in its long passage across the Pacific "Two-Line Struggle" became separated from its soul-mate, "Letting Contradictions Ripen," hence the debacle of a number of left formations in the late '60s and '70s. But the subscribers to maillists do not share an ongoing practical struggle, and arguments tend to become unanchored in any real context whatsoever. And in the pure realm of ideas (a maillist rather resembles a Platonic colloquy), differences ove X too easily become differences over EVERYTHING.
In any case, Alec is raising questions of tactics and strategy, not of the nature and origin of capitalism, and there is no direct link from "Imperialism" as it is being discussed on Pen-L and imperialism in my triad of strategic 'problems.'
Different people are understanding Julio over on the marxism list in rather different ways, and some I respect see him other than I do. I see him as being the polar opposite or rather twin of you and Lou. Just as you and Lou seem to be collapsing capitalism into imperialism Julio seems to be collapsing imperialism into capitalism. I have always taken the Leninist view that they are inseparable, that imperialism is the mode of existence of the latest developments of capitalism. By collapsing one into the other one ceases to understand either one _or_ their relation, and understanding that relation is essential in practice. The Weathermen destroyed SDS and the anti-war movement by giving up on the struggle against capitalism to focus on imperialism as a moral evil, just as "real" bourgeois feminists (as opposed to the myriad of bourgeois feminists who preoccupy the feverish imaginatiions of sexist marxists) focus on "patriarchy" as an autonomous evil without grounding in the whole of the social relations, and . . . .
Carrol