[lbo-talk] specious generalizations...

Jim Devine jdevine03 at gmail.com
Sun Jul 17 09:04:24 PDT 2005


As usual, it's best to put this in context. Part of the problem here is that the "left" (which is a small, scattered, and fragmented grouping) in the US and to some extent elsewhere spends a lot of its energy and time trying to counteract the view put forth by the official media, i.e., that the US is the center of all that's good and noble -- pushing democracy and freedom -- and that those who disagree are insane, terroristic, nihilistic, etc. [*] Because of this, people often end up sounding like a mirror-image of the official media.

To my mind, the major correct point in Lenin's theory of imperialism is that it sees it as a _social system_ (rather than a policy of elites). That doesn't say that the "oppressors" are always bad and that the "oppressed" are always good.

[*] The US intra-establishmentarian argument is NOT about whether or not the US is the font of all goodness. Instead, it's about the strategy and tactics of how that goodness can be spread. The multilateralists belive that the US can do a better job by bringing the allies and that Bush is doing a poor job at bringing goodness to the world.

On 7/17/05, Chris Doss wrote:
> OK, my position is that "the left," by which I mean
> self-identified leftists living mostly in Western
> countries, often has a tendency to see things through
> the lens of an anti-imperialist framework inherited I
> suppose from Lenin and then modified through the
> 20th-century. In this view, in conflicts between
> groups of people, the participants are divided into
> "oppressor" and "oppressed" groups (or it is an
> "interimperialist" struggle), with the "oppressor"
> group -- which usually means which of the two groups
> happens to be stronger -- being at fault, any violence
> generated by the "oppressed" group being merely an
> epiphenomenon, an understandable reaction to the
> violence of the "oppressor."
>
> For example, in the case of the British bombers, we
> have people assuming that they must have been
> motivated by the Iraq War, because, since they are
> Muslims (weak group vs. stronger group), they are in
> the "oppressed" class and their violence must
> therefore be an epiphenomenon upon the violence of the
> "oppressor."
>
> Just about any article in Z Magazine on any conflict
> going on in the world will provide illustration of
> this, with the partial exceptions of Taiwan and Tibet
> (since people haven't decided yet whether China is an
> oppressor or an oppressed country). Turkey/the Kurds
> is all the fault of the Turks, India/Kashmir is all
> the fault of India, Israel/Palestine is all Israel's
> fault, Russia is 100% to blame for Chechnya, etc.
>
> Nu, zayats, pogodi!
>
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-- Jim Devine "Science is the belief in the ignorance of the experts" -- Richard Feynman



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