[lbo-talk] Co-opting Solidarity: Privilege in the Palestine Solidarity Movement

Michael Pugliese debsian at pacbell.net
Tue Jul 15 14:43:23 PDT 2003


On Tue, 15 Jul 2003 23:16:53 +0800, Grant Lee <grantlee at iinet.net.au> wrote:


> Michael,
>
> I was disappointed with that article's lack of recognition of another
> kind
> of "privilege", i.e economic class, _within_ national/ethnic struggles,
> whether this is represented by the Palestinian bourgeoisie, or native
> American and African American entrepreneurs, to cite quite different
> examples.
>
> regards
>
> Grant.

Yes, that was an ellision in the analysis. One strength of Old Left marxism, often forgotten was it's suspicion of nationalism for it's occlusion of class domination. For not genuflecting towards nationalist romanticizing of an undivided people historians like Hobsbawm get rubbished on other internet "marxist" fora that in theory declaim against Stalinist two stage theories (first the national democratic revo under the "leadership" of a mythical "national bourgeoisie" then later the socialist revo, which, in the last instance, never occurs, but, whenever, in the real world, an actual revolution occurs under the strict control of a M-L vanguard party (think of the FSLN or FMLN, after reading speeches to party militants by such as Tomas Borge, and then remember the agitprop to credulous liberals in the 80's attempting to hide the radical intent as if the Ortgega brothers were little more than liberal Democrats in a hurry) the discipling of the working class and peasantry to the demands of int'l. capital can be implemented under the logic of the need for national unity.

-- Michael Pugliese



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