I differ from Laclau and Mouffe and John Halloway.
At the level of analyzing the mode of production and secular trends of capitalism, class contradiction takes analytical precedence over other -- intra-class and trans-class -- contradictions. The problem is that too many leftists apply what makes sense at _that_ analytical level to the empirical level of short-term struggles where intra-class and trans-class struggles matter as much as, sometime more than, inter-class struggles.
Struggles like the EZLN's could develop further if they, together with other working people, could create a "national-popular," achieve political supremacy to win state power, recognizing the limits of what a state can do under capitalism, and continue to constitute themselves as a base of dual power.
EZLN, with several other orgs, was doing "the Other Campaign"* during the run-up to the Mexican elections last year. Did that campaign make sense? I wonder if things might not have turned out better if there had been more cooperation rather than competition between AMLO + PRD on one hand and "the Other Campaign" and other forces on the other hand.
* <http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/mt220406.html> Resistance on the Mexican "Riviera": The Zapatistas Visit Manzanillo, Colima by Jess MacKenzie and Ernest Tate
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We also wanted to hear what Marcos would say about the current Mexican presidential campaign, in this "season of protest," and to see on the ground, so to speak, how it related to the EZLN's strategy for building "an alliance with the non-electoral left in Mexico who want to build from below." The EZLN's "Sixth Declaration" (known in Mexico as the "Sexta"), which forms the basis of "La Otra Campaña" and was adopted last year by a broad coalition of left and activists groups (and open to "non-registered political parties"), denounced all three major capitalist parties for being in the service of neo-liberalism, and attacked the Partido de la Revolución Democrática (PRD) very sharply for its betrayal of the San Andreas Accords (negotiated with the President Vicente Fox to give some autonomy to indigenous communities). The Zapatistas have also declared their solidarity with Cuba and Venezuela's Bolivarian Revolution.
In his debate with some on the left who have urged him to support the PRD's candidate, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Marcos has said that López Obrador speaks with two tongues -- one for the popular movements, seemingly to agree with many of their demands, and one for the ruling elites, to whom he promises to continue Fox's neo-liberal agenda. "The PRD has been hijacked by scoundrels," the Zapatista leader says, and he points to the repressive actions of some PRD-controlled municipal governments in Chiapas: violence against Zapatista activists and cutting off water to some Zapatista-influenced indigenous communities.
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The EZLN seems to be going through a process of change from being essentially an armed-struggle movement, an "army," to becoming a political organization of some kind, and Holloway may be over-generalizing from what is but a moment in the history of its evolution.
However, if it's a political party which comes out of all this, it will probably be quite different from anything we've seen before, obviously shaped by the experience in Chiapas. But there's no doubt the EZLN's present "non-political" line will give them some difficulties in the current conjuncture because many activists will be swept up into electoral politics behind López Obrador. The old notion that politics abhors a vacuum applies here. Already a key veteran of the C.P., Armando Martinez Verdugo, has broken ranks. But the evidence suggests the EZLN is not thinking in the short-term but maybe of the next "Sixeno." We prefer to see it as being in the process of consolidating its forces and supporters outside its base in Chiapas. They are a mass phenomenon. Their powerful hard-won position as the voice of Mexico's most oppressed, the 10,000,000 indigenous and the poor, combined with their strong opposition to environmental degradation as seen in Campos, has placed them in a key strategic position to lead in a genuine recomposition of the Mexican left. Marcos seems to hope they will eventually win over those social activists who are now supporting López Obrador but who will eventually be disappointed by him, to help in the building of an effective mass political force capable of fundamentally changing Mexico.
> Obviously, it
> would be interesting to see how each would respond to the Venezuelan
> situation. As to Venezuela, my inclination is to argue that this
> points to the precariousness and the incompleteness of the process,
> rather than its embrace of 'restoration.'
If the process is precarious, it's in large part because the bourgeoisie remain in Venezuela -- it's just that they are subordinated to the state; because the state's continuing dependence on oil revenues makes it vulnerable to fluctuations in the volatile oil market; and Venezuela's economy is deeply tied to America's, which is heading to the South now.
> I'm a little more
> tentative on that, though. Ultimately, I still think that there
> needs to be more work done on the Chavista movement as a social
> movement. Robert Wood
Community organizations are more the motor of the Chavista movement than traditional workers' organizations like trade unions. It's in the nature of political economy where informal sector workers outnumber formal sector workers. -- Yoshie <http://montages.blogspot.com/>