From: "Paul Bowman" <paulbowman-AT-totalise.co.uk>
Subject: AUT: Re: Autonomist Marxist analyses of the crisis?
Date: Mon, 24 Sep 2001 01:43:14 +0100


Scott said:
> The
> left of the antiwar movement needs the
> antiauthoritarianism, commitment to democracy and
> energy of anarchists.

but also:
> The litmus test for the success of repoliticisation,
> in the left as in the rest of society, will be the
> adoption of a truly internationalist stance, [..]
> which acknowledges the right of Third World peoples
> oppressed by imperialism to self-defence, even when
> the said peoples use states or  organisations with
> reactionary ideologies as their vehicles for
> self-defence. [...]today, of course, the
> calls for critical support of states threatened by
> imperialism are confined to a small number of [...]
 anti-war movement[...]. Such an argument shows up a failure to
> achieve an internationalist perspective because, for
> no reason other than national bias, it subordinates
> the perspective and demands of those taking part in
> the massive, crucial anti-imperialist struggles in
> frontline states like Pakistan to the mood of public
> opinion in faraway, privileged, relatively unimportant
> New Zealand.

*sigh*. Nation-statism is clearly as addictive as heroin. Just as the
reformed junkie spends all evening preaching the virtues of clean living,
only to be found slumped in the toilets with a needle hanging out of his/her
arm. So we wade through the reformed, newly "autonomist" piece to find the
same old leninist bullshit re-introduced in the penultimate paragraph. Back
to critical support for the subordinate state. Ho hum. Once again, how does
a position of "critical" support for the Taliban state inform our attitude
to deserters, the Northern Alliance, the ethnic Tajiks, Uzbeks, Hazaris,
non-Taliban Pashtuns, and, last but not least, those women who risk their
lives to educate girl children? Scott conflates, wrongly and dishonestly,
ordinary Afghanis with their rulers. A failure of class perspective in the
face of knee-jerk bolshevik "anti-imperialism" methinks.

P.S. on the plus side I learned a lot from the rest of the article re: NZ
history of class struggle.




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