Date: Mon, 4 May 1998 00:14:47 +0200 (MET DST)
From: Harald Beyer-Arnesen <haraldba-AT-online.no>
Subject: AUT: re: Louis on Reeve


  
Louis Proyect wrote (extracted from different posts):      

        Don't you love the arrogance of the imperialist left, 
        dictating tactics to the Mexican guerrillas? Don't ever 
        expect the Zapatistas to instruct the French autonomists 
        what should go on their leaflets, they are much too decent 
        and smart for this.
        --------
        (...) With respect to the possibility that the EZLN has 
        vanguardist political principles, there is absolutely nothing 
        wrong with this. After all, the ruling class has its own vanguard 
        organized in the think-tanks, editorial boards, cops, etc.  Why 
        should the workers and peasants not try to create their own 
        leadership?
        --------
        What is the problem with dictating tactics to Sandinistas or 
        Zapatistas: "Don't censor La Prensa"; "Stop harassing the 
        Catholic Church"; "Stop kow-towing to the Catholic Church." 
        Simple. It implies a level political playing-field, when in 
        reality the discourse is unidirectional. It is always the 
        leftists in imperialist countries who behave this way. People 
        like Fidel Castro, Daniel Ortega and Subcommandante Marcos 
        wouldn't dream of advising the Nation Magazine not to endorse 
        Clinton.
                If there was a united socialist movement worldwide, 
        where sister parties had equal weight, then such give-and-take 
        on tactics might not be unseemly. In the given political 
        context, it strikes me as big brother arroganc"
        --------
        The Cuban Communists also made their criticisms known to the 
        FSLN, all along the way. These criticisms were made on a peer 
        to peer basis. The sort of baloney that Reeves is writing, and 
        you accept uncritically, is just patronizing advice from afar."


You also state, Louis, that "Reeves is a fool".
 
While Charles Reeve's and Sylvie Deneuve's critique itself 
is not beyond critique (something I am sure they would agree 
on), your main critique of them seem not be over the 
accuracy or relevance of what they write, but for raising a 
critique at all. A position I find absurd.

I may have misread you Louis, but it seems to me from the 
above that what is an acceptable critique for you is that 
exchanged between state capitalists, between people
many on this lists include among our class enemies. 
It is quite understandable that someone who sees Fidel Castro 
among the peers select and the Cuban "communists" exploitatition 
and oppression of the working class within its boundaries as 
admirable, will not find anything worthwhile in the critique 
of the EZLN raised by Charles Reeves and Sylvie Deneuve, 
whatever its accuracy.
It is also not unlogical that one who has "a profound respect 
for Leon Trotsky as a Marxist thinker", (such an eloquent 
defender of slavery) would have trouble finding anything useful 
in the questions Charles Reeve raised in the post forwared
by Katha.
   
Writing a critique and "dictating tactics to the Mexican 
guerrillas" is two very different things. It is quite a 
mystery for me how Reeve and Deneuve could be in any position 
to dictate anyone what to do. I also find it extremly 
unlikely that they would wish to be in a position where 
they could.

If you were less concerned about telling us what a complete
idiot Charles Reeve is and putting Katha down for earning her 
living by writing for the Nation, you might have noticed that
Reeve in his reply to this list raised some crucial questions
concerning the situation developing in Chiapas these very
days. A development which puts your insistence on focusing 
almost exclusively on the indigenousness in a strange, to not 
say deadly light. That is at least how I see it.I hope to 
return to this in a latter post. 

Reeve and Deneuve may not have all the right answers, and 
neither do I think they believe so themselves, but they 
seem to have an ability to raise the right questions. Questions
which actually arise from the very logic of the form of 
struggle chosen by the EZLN. I also think these are questions
very much related to the one of class composition, and with no
easy answers immediately at hand. They, like the current 
situation, have to be created.

Harald

PS. Louis, corrrect me if I have misread you.






  



 
  in solidarity,
  Harald Beyer-Arnesen
  haraldba-AT-online.no



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