Marxism is a tool for organizers, but mass movements in which organizers who make use of Marxism play crucial roles may or may not speak the precise language of classical Marxism or employ the same icons of former communist movements (red flags and all that).
At 9:49 PM -0800 2/9/03, andie nachgeborenen wrote:
>>Today, I look at Venezuela with Chavez and Bolivarians, for
>>instance, and see Marxism alive and kicking. Marxists and Marxism
>>as a social theory exist in the Bolivarian movement,
>
>Historical materialism correctly predicts anticapitalsit struggles
>will continue. Why that shows that Marxism as a movement has
>enduring vitality I do not see.
First of all, Marxism and Marxists have played crucial roles in the Bolivarian movement, well documented by scholars who comment on it. Secondly, Bolivarismo, like Sandinismo before it, is a good example of a vibrant social movement in which Marxism and Marxists play crucial roles but probably not exactly in the shape that classical Marxists were able to foresee (e.g., Sandinismo's mestizaje of Marxism and liberation theology, eclectic influences upon Hugo Chavez and the Bolivarians). Thirdly, Sandinismo and Bolivarismo may have something to teach the rest of the world: regenerative powers of creative miscegenation of some of the vocabulary of class struggles bequeathed by Marxism and some of the traditions of resistance to the ruling classes and empires inherited from indigenous political movements older than Marxism. Such miscegenation has occurred everywhere, but it has been particularly productive in Latin America. Lastly, the Cuban example -- the last nation on earth whose social relations may be still called socialist in an attractive sense -- shows you that a movement that will become Marxist in content may start neither as a "communist movement" nor as a movement led by "Marxists." Non-Marxist movements and leaders may very well grow into taking substantially Marxist positions, in response to exigencies of struggles. So, where there is a vibrant mass movement on the left, there is always a chance that the movement will take "a Marxist turn," so to speak, primarily in defense of itself.
At 9:49 PM -0800 2/9/03, andie nachgeborenen wrote:
>>Even some old icons are sometimes given new lives and meanings.
>>E.g., activists singing and playing "Bella Ciao" -- a song of
>>Italian Partisans in the Resistance -- in Genoa in 2001:...
>
>Perhaps, but that's not a reason to cling to old skins and old
>meanings, much as it breaks my heart to say it.
Justin, now that you got a well-paid job at a big-time firm, after putting in some work there, take a long break and tour the parts of the world where leftists are in better shape than in the USA -- because you deserve it, and because you'll see how creative folks around the world are when it comes to making beautiful new patchworks out of old skins, filled with new and old meanings.
At 9:49 PM -0800 2/9/03, andie nachgeborenen wrote:
>When someone is advocating a view that's been given a century and a
>half of vigorous effort, and is no practically nowhere, the burden
>of proof is on her.
A century and a half ain't that long in a history of struggles for liberation. Think about the passage of time between the first African reduced to a chattel slave, the first abolitionist tract published in the New World, and the emancipation of all chattel slaves in the world.
At 9:49 PM -0800 2/9/03, andie nachgeborenen wrote:
>Anyway, in rejecting my view, you're implicitly saying that Marxism
>is an essential part of a vibrant left wing movement in something
>like the foreseeable future, someting that makes it worth devoting
>your life to the effort despite considerable risks and sacrifices.
It will be great if Marxism will become an essential part of a vibrant left-wing movement in the near future in Japan (where I'm from) or the United States (where I'm at now), but I can't say for sure. For the time being, in practice, I'm trying to do my part in building up a vibrant left-wing movement, at the same time as trying to help repair and renovate Marxism as a social theory, so it will be of use to organizers now and in the future if they take interest in taking stock of the state of struggles intellectually.
At 9:49 PM -0800 2/9/03, andie nachgeborenen wrote:
>>My (and probably Miles') generation's experience is, in contrast,
>>that of being born at the bottom and climbing up tooth and nail,
>>with no illusion. I've never personally "lived" Marxism as an
>>essential element of a mass movement on the rise, so, for me, no
>>loss is involved -- only a painstaking advance from zero.
>
>You're not that much youinger than me, Yoshie.
I was born in 1964 -- sorry, I forget in what year you were born. Anyway, your remark just shows you how quickly political fortunes change! If my memory serves me, I think you got to experience the tail end of a flowering of left-wing radicalism that Max Elbaum discusses in _Revolution in the Air: Sixties Radicals Turn to Lenin, Mao, and Che_ (@ <http://revolutionintheair.com/>). I never did get to see a peep of it, except in books, movies, and stories of older activists. By the time I came to some rudiments of "political consciousness," it was all over! The horrible Japanese Red Army Asama Villa incident in 1972 (when I was eight!) practically marked both the end and the nadir of sixties' radicalism in Japan. It's in part because I was born and grew up in a small town called Hikari (its population then was something like 30,000), but I felt like nothing remotely left-wing by way of political activism was happening around me, with a minor exception of a friend & workmate of my father's. He was in the JCP and got my father to subscribe to the party paper _Akahata [The Red Flag]_, so I grew up reading it; the paper looked (to me) like not so much left-wing -- much less revolutionary -- as simply working-class common sense, because the other paper to which my family also subscribed was _Asahi Shinbun_, which was much to the left of all other major Japanese newspapers (and still probably is very liberal, though I don't read it regularly now), and I couldn't see any drastic difference between them. Anyhow, that's just about it. My college years in Tokyo were also quiet years on campuses everywhere in Japan, so I never did join any existing left-wing group (neither the JCP nor any of the leftover radical orgs from the sixties), as I couldn't see any point in doing so. I wasn't politically savvy enough to start something new and interesting, and even if I had been, I probably would have gone nowhere (I made an error of going to an elite university which was then _full_ of of complacent rich kids). Politics in Japan and the USA still suck, but compared to my high school and college years, more things are surely happening in both nations! -- Yoshie
* Calendar of Events in Columbus: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html> * Student International Forum: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://solidarity.igc.org/>