[lbo-talk] Left/Venezuela

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

James Heartfield Heartfield at blueyonder.co.uk, Tue Aug 17 09:24:11 PDT 2004:
>I don't see a lack of activism as the problem, but a lack of 
>clarity. Too often, on the left, old labels pretend a common 
>interest or programme, but once you start talking you discover that 
>your new found comrades think that it is self-evident that the 
>international community should be sending troops into 
>Darfur/Yugoslavia/Somalia; or that to them it is self-evident that 
>living standards in the west need to be constrained (or - from the 
>other point of view - that they shouldn't).
>
>The recent Iraq war was an interesting forcing house for theories 
>about 'imperialism' for example, but for the most part the big books 
>that were written (by David Harvey, Ellen Meiksins Wood, Michael 
>Mann) were incoherent and contradictory. But there was precious 
>little desire for theoretical clarification on the part of the 
>anti-war movement, which, as Doug described at the time, had no 
>strong desire for thinking beyond the immediate imperatives of the 
>conflict.

The reason why there is "precious little desire for theoretical 
clarification on the part of the anti-war movement" and "no strong 
desire for thinking beyond the immediate imperatives of the conflict" 
is that thinking beyond an election year and clarifying where we 
stand theoretically get in the way of crushing opposition to the two 
parties of empire.

Besides, what's the point of "theory" if you are using it, like David 
Harvey, only to construct an elaborate rationalization for 
campaigning for the Democratic Party?

"Democracy in Venezuela, under the banner of the Bolivarian 
revolutionaries, has broken through the corrupt two-party system 
favoured by the oligarchy and its friends in the West." -- Tariq Ali, 
August 16, 2004
-- 
Yoshie

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