[lbo-talk] A good essay on Christopher Hitchens

[wrobert at uci.edu]

I think that is a mistake to separate Chavez' thinking from the historical
materialist project (which I suspect you are not doing entirely)  Chavez
is also more than willing to reference Marx, Gramsci, and Luxemburg in his
speeches (a friend saw a section of a speech working through the concept
of the organic intellectual for instance.)  And perhaps more
significantly, when you enter into the speech of the subalterns of the
movement, you will run into a lot of language that will sound, frankly,
Maoist.  I agree that you can't simply reduce Chavez to this, but its
there, and not as a fringe influence.  robert wood

P.S.  I am always suspicious when the phrase 'as old as human existence'
is invoked.  The 'humanism' that we talk about is invariably the
'humanism' of the enlightenment.  Kind of a historical phenomenon
>
> Your post above (and another recent one about Chavez presenting Obama
> with a book) inspired me to bring the below response (which I had
> abandoned) from my Drafts folder. FWIW:
>
> Hugo Chavez speaks of a "new socialism" and holds up a book by Noam
> Chomsky.
>
> All IMHO: the 20th century struggles were dominated by anti-colonial
> movements and the broader frameworks in which they were grounded (e.g:
> Gandhi, Raja Ram Mohan Roy), and the civil rights struggles of
> particular groups. They were, it seems to me, influenced and informed
> by a range of moral/humanist traditions and practices with a history
> as old as human existence. Their counterparts (in the West) are some
> of the very individuals listed as those Hitchens takes up cudgels with
> for standing in opposition to his beloved internationalism: Chomsky,
> Zinn, others. (interestingly not former comrades from this
> internationalism).
>
> I am reaching a point where I wonder if Hitchens and his detractors
> (as outlined in this piece, with his detractors being identified as
> "the Left") are irrelevant to the future. They own the terminology and
> to some extent the [verbal] debate, but I have reason to hope that
> third world movements hold the answers of the future.
>
> 	--ravi
>
> --
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>
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