Nathan Newman wrote:
>Actually I was pushing on the easy libertarian "anti-government" consensus
>that sees military action as horrible, but far more deaths due to the
>operation of the infrastructure of capitalism as "non-intentional."
-Eh? A revolutionary Leninist party isn't interested in the -infrastructure of capitalism? That's bizarre.
Not really- the Marcyist theory is that class war is no longer between classes within countries but almost purely between countries in the WWP's "Global Class War" vision. They pay attention to the economic issues but their passion is on attacking the US as a country in opposing other countries. The internal class contradictions of the global system that are internal to both sides of their purely state-to-state analysis is largely irrelevant to most of their analysis, and essentially absent whenever the discussion turns to war-and-peace issues.
They are the "hate America left", not from attitude but from clear ideological vision that the enemy of the US is their friend, absolutely and always. That is the lesson of their analysis.
So no, the infrastructure of capitalism is essentially uninteresting to them, since they see countries as monoliths combatting alternative monoliths. They and some far rightwingers are the some of the only folks who really think the Chinese are still communists in any marxist sense.
>Let me be straight-- I don't think the Iraq war or even US military wars in
>general are even close to the most important issue in the world.
-Would there be so many routine early deaths if it weren't for -imperialism, and where would imperialism be without the U.S. -military? Like I said earlier, I'm not sure I would use the word, but -you've got to talk about imperialism even if it annoys the masses you -aim to recruit.
Maybe, but I don't really buy this war as part of it, or the whole capitalist class of Europe would not be so dead-set against it and so much of the US establishment would not be so doubtful. This is a war of a particularly miltiary-and-oil dependent part of the capitalist class, not those worried about the broad infrastructure of global capitalism. It is quite possible for a war to serve the interests of a narrow class of capitalists while doing little or even harm to global capitalist interests as a whole. There are sectarians on the capitalist side as well-- and oil interests are the class group who often serve their own interests at the expense of the rest of the system. Add in a President feeding on the political juice of war-fervor and I just don't buy analyzing this war in some monolithic "imperialism" framework.
It's just too stupid a war with too many possibilities of being counter-productive. Frankly, if you really hate the US, you should cheerlead this war, since the results are likely to inflame enemies of the country. I'm sure Bin Laden as his ilk would like nothing more than to see the Iraq war. It's a bit like the Likud and Hamas feeding off each other's extremism as the expense of the health, security and economic well-being of their respective societies.
-- Nathan newman