[lbo-talk] Americans kinda like torture

[Eric Beck]

> Gandhi was a disaster for the Indian people. The kind of struggles he
> allowed did not involve the politicization of masses of people and led
> to the continued misery of the masses of the people and the continued
> close collaboration of the Indian elite wtih world capitalism.
>
> The struggles in South Africa failed at a certain point -- but they were
> struggles. The struggle in India nevere got started, thanks to Gandhi.
>
> Struggles grounded in some metaphysic such as pacifism are fundamentally
> authoritarian in nature. Pacifism as an ism is contemptuous of people.
> They don't measure up to its high standards and therefore are not worthy
> of freedom. This is not true of many individual pacifists; in their case
> practice and theory divide.

I don't necessarily disagree with gist of this rant, but I'd take it
more seriously if I ever heard you express some of that bile towards
other isms that are at least equally as "contemptuous of people."
Leninism and its dictatorship of the proletariat and affinity for
Taylorism, for instance, are about directing people and "did not
involve the politicization of masses of people." And while Leninism
didn't collaborate with the existing elites, it did create its own
very quickly. And plugged very directly into world capitalism.