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

Grant Lee grantlee at iinet.net.au
Tue Jul 15 16:26:11 PDT 2003



> 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

Yes. It's not just classical/orthodox historical materialism that has this take: e.g. Althusser, Poulantzas, Hardt & Negri, etc.


> 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,

"National bourgeoisies" may be diminutive but they are not "mythical" --- even the US republic started out with an isolated grouping of capitalists, whose interests were distinct from the dominant layers in London. (Of course, unlike national bourgeoisies these days, US capitalism had the "evolutionary advantage" of occurring when there wer few competitors.)


> 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.

Absolutely. As an aside, a friend has met a former senior Sandinista who now lives in Australia --- he must have wanted to get as far away as possible --- and it seems he is a crypto-reactionary, at least these days, who complains about asylum seekers, among other things. Revolution in one country? Hmmm.



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