[lbo-talk] Populism or Neoliberalism? Turkey, Venezuela, Etc.

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

On 7/26/07, Mike Ballard <swillsqueal at yahoo.com.au> wrote:
> Yoshie wrote:
>
> It's clear that whatever choice people make, liberalism, populism,
> socialism, or any other system, the economy that results form it
> experiences difficulties specific to its type as well as brings
> benefits also specific to it.  We have to, first of all, understand
> what they are, so we can clarify costs and benefits of alternatives.
>
> What else is to be done today, given the range of choices that people
> are making?
> *********
>
> I think the tactical advice Marx gave is still relevant, to wit:
>
> "The Communists fight for the attainment of the immediate aims, for the
> enforcement of the momentary interests of the working class; but in the
> movement of the present, they also represent and take care of the *future of
> that movement*..."
>
> and,
>
> "In short, the Communists everywhere support every revolutionary movement
> against the existing social and political order of things.
>
> In all these movements, they bring to the front, as the leading question in
> each, *the property question, no matter what its degree of development at the
> time*.
>
> "Finally, they labor everywhere for the union and agreement of the democratic
> parties of all countries.
>
> "The Communists *disdain to conceal their views and aims*. They openly declare
> that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing
> social conditions."

Yes, we must take care of the future of a communist movement.
However, our task is made difficult by the fact that there is no
international communist movement to speak of at present.  What does it
mean to take care of the future of a movement that has yet to be born?

The way I see it, the world today is divided into three camps:
builders, wreckers, and those who stand in the middle.  Builders are
Latin socialists and mass Islamists (in Iran, Lebanon, Palestine, and
so forth), and wreckers are US imperialists and jihadist cells of al
Qaeda varieties.  In the middle are states such as Russia, China,
Brazil, India, Turkey, and so on.

Political divisions between nations and within nations therefore
seldom fit neatly into old categories such as "left," "right," and
"center."

That is the context in which all class and social struggles take
place.  In some cases therefore I defend the existing local order
against those who wreck it, and in other cases I welcome revolt and
revolution against the existing local order.  The primary standard is
always, what will check US hegemony?  For, without checking it, there
is no chance that any communist movement will be born in the future,
and civilization may not continue to exist that a communist movement
to be can inherit.
-- 
Yoshie