> Date: Thu, 12 Feb 2004 13:26:04 -0600
> From: Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu>
> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Iraq, the left and the 'resistance' (Geras
>
> I mentioned that Ho had been a prime agent of the
> Third International, that he was indeed a "real" communist,
>
> Tahir: The comintern was not necesarily the great credential that you are
> presenting it to be...
From Henri Lefebvre, member of the French Communist Party from the 20's till being expelled in the 50's, taken from pg. 29 of Verso's translation of his, "Introduction to Modernity, chapter entitled, "On Irony, Maieutic and History."
"Thus the Stalinist period has left lasting traces which no 'Secret Report' could ever erase. Marxist language-in other words, the official Marxism which has become a language_ has objectively determinable characteristics. It particular, it is a language not of information, but of decision. The presentation of motive and arguments, of facts and information is reduced to a minimum. The transition from reflection to political judgement is immediate. Facts and values becomes interchangable.. The language uses the logic of decision-making. The strategy worked out from the basis of an empirical evaluation of balance of forces and possibility is translated immediately into orders for action. The language says what must and must not be said and done, given the balance of forces. It reduced the gap between conception and execution to a minimum (especiallly when theory is defective and ideology diverges to a substantial degree from current practice). Thus there has never been a political language to match it; it levates political strength to the level of the quintessential sacred power: the power to decid edestiny. Its lack of style in the aesthetic sense endows it with style of another kind: the style of politics as an absolute."
-- Michael Pugliese