One can't say that "of course a Leninist position" on X means Y here, as a Leninist position on anything is alien to many LBO-talkers. First, one must clarify what's what before attempting to have an intelligible discussion on things Leninist.
At 3:59 PM -0500 3/25/03, JBrown72073 at cs.com wrote:
>>>i don't buy revolutionary defeatism. i fail to see what wish
>>>horrors on people does for radicalism.
>>
>>I agree. But I think a lot of what comes off as wishing horrors is
>>actually speculating on the effect of horrors over which we have no
>>control. Of course, the reason to hope the U.S. military gets
>>bogged down is that they won't be inclined to do it again.
I was responding to an odd use of the term "revolutionary defeatism" above. What I was getting at is simply what I wrote: revolutionary defeatism has nothing to do with "wishing horrors on people," contrary to what is suggested on this listserv.
At 12:08 AM +0000 3/26/03, loupaulsen at attbi.com wrote:
>The kind of defeat which Lenin was writing about in that article was
>the risk of having German troops march into Russia. Lenin said that
>even that would be the lesser evil. But in this case we aren't
>talking about Iraqi tanks driving into the United States somehow, we
>are just talking about US tanks and planes being obstructed from
>destroying and conquering in Iraq. You don't have to be very
>revolutionary even, to be for that kind of defeatism. In this war
>you can have "liberal defeatism" even.
Some who call themselves "liberals" may actually hold a position that you call "liberal defeatism" above. We do have a virtual coalition called "Win Without War," though.
Beyond the current war on Iraq, "liberal defeatism" probably is untenable, as it is no match for the National Security State powered by the so-called "war on terrorism" after 9.11.
At 8:33 PM -0600 3/24/03, Carrol Cox wrote:
>Odd that I should have not connected this topic with the slogan that
>the SWP popularized: "Bring the troops home now." That slogan caught
>on _outside_ the 'reach' of SWP influence because it was a good way
>to say "Surrender now!"
"Bring the Troops Home Now" may have been a way of saying "Surrender Now!" to the US government (without saying so in so many words) during the days of the anti-Vietnam War movement, but today's slogan "Support the Troops -- Bring Them Home" can very well be a way of expressing a wish that the Iraqis surrender now, so that the USG can conquer Iraq quickly, as some see the quick Iraqi surrender as the only way to minimize war casualties. -- Yoshie
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