From: "cwright" <cwright-AT-21stcentury.net>
Subject: AUT: Re: Re: Re: Why People Join Vanguard Organizations?
Date: Sun, 21 Oct 2001 09:40:20 -0500


> er... maybe i'm being nit-picky, or not understanding this section of the
> email, but
>
> > literature was not promoted, we did not sell the newspaper to middle
class
> > people (e.g. students,
>
> since when are students middle class?
>
> i guess the (re)production of labor power and capitalist ideology is
middle
> class work?

First, I know where you are going here (since by answering yes to that
question, housewives would become middle class).  This is an ongoing debate
between us on class.  I see no reason to think that being a student
necessarily makes one middle class, though increasingly access to
post-secondary education is restricted the the children of management and
professionals (not to mention bourgeois).  Anyway, this is not new ground
and I will not re-hash it and will continue to refer to the SI article on
the poverty of student life.

Second, that was Spark's perspective.  Part of the reason a few of us left
was the idea that being a student automatically made one middle class (petty
bourgeois).  It did not matter to Spark if the person was floating by on
family money with no need to work, etc or if that person had to work full
time just to attend.  That to me was patently absurd.

> hrm... i found this whole email confusing, actually. tho i have to say
that
> spark is the only leninist group i've ever heard of that actually seems to
> desire its membership to be intellectually involved. pretty interesting.

Indeed, it is a rare group in that way.  However, the group does restrict
the range of what one can do with those ideas by its restriction of what is
'revolutionary' activity.

> tho i do have a hard time seeing lenin, the originator of the theory of
> national self-determination somehow being revolutionary, as somehow
> anti-nationalist.

You know, that's the funny thing.  I am re-reading his writings on national
self-determination right now and his whole emphasis is that the defense (he
emphatically separates this from the demand) of national self-determination
is a negative demand.  It is not the job of Marxists to call for, to demand,
national self-determination.  Rather, depending on one's social location,
one has different tasks in a very specific situation.  When one nation
oppresses another, when one country makes a colony of another nation, the
workers and revolutionaries of the oppressor nation are obliged to defend,
if the 'mass' of the population of the colonized country demand it, their
right to separate.  Now, while Lenin may overemphasize the statist aspects
of this, how can we not defend the right of oppressed peoples the right to
determine their own course?

Two issues arise from this.

Firstly, this does not mean defending the nationalists.  Lenin is quite
clear that nationalists are reactionaries, that national self-determination
for them is about hiding class divisions.  Lenin sees the defense of the
RIGHT as revolutionary and as key to bringing workers together.  This is not
far-fetched, IMO.

Secondly, to say as Harald did that the Algerians should not have separated,
but should have have made it a civil rights issue is exactly something Lenin
would have called bourgeois liberalism.  Why?  Because to call for that is
to accept the nationalism of the oppressor nation, of the colonizer.  The
Algerian worker does not see the French worker as his/her class sibling in
such a situation, but as a French colonizer.  The best thing a French worker
could do would be to say: "Do what you must.  We will defend your right to
determine your own course.  Understand that the nationalists are your
enemies as well.  But, like workers on strike, we will defend your fight
regardless of the leadership, while critiquing the destructive and
reactionary nature of those leaders."  Otherwise, the Algerian worker does
not see a fellow worker in France but a colonizer.  If one is not a member
of the group being oppressed, one does not have a right to tell people what
to do.  We can have a political discussion, but we cannot pin our support on
whether or not they are doing what we want them to.  Our criteria have to be
different.  In this case, the criteria is whether or not the struggle is
against colonization, against national oppression.

Harald's position would be similar to the argument of the Bund for cultural
autonomy.  Lenin, IMO rightly, says that this is defense of imperial
nationalism in the guise of opposing nationalism.  Why?  Because it leaves a
people who have been coerced, who remain coerced, and whose continuation in
a 'national' relationship will continue to require coercion, in the position
of accepting the idea of better treatment under that coercion, rather than
seeking an end to that specific form of coercion.  And ALWAYS Lenin argues
that this is also fundamentally about consciousness, especially the
consciousness of the workers in the oppressor country.  It is about fighting
their nationalism, our nationalism FIRST as our main problem.

In light of this, I think the defense of the Bob Myers idea and support for
RAWA are more in line with my thinking than with the ideas on this list on
this question.  What makes RAWA distinctly different from the KLA?  Not a
lot, actually.  The KLA was a coalition of forces, some openly reactionary,
some not.  RAWA seeks the return of the king in that last statement as the
only possible arbiter over a democratic transition.  RAWA seeks national
self-determination against the Taliban and the US.  Don't get me wrong.  I
like Bob Myers' idea and I intend to try and implement it here in Chicago.
But let's look at RAWA and what Bob Myers proposed carefully in light of the
discussions or non-discussions here and in relation to Kosova, Rwanda, the
KLA, etc.

Finally, on this idesa of national self-determination.  Ultimately, it is a
question of how best to bring unity to the working class.  Lenin may have
had a lot of wrong theory.  He may have not understood Marx correctly in
many fundamental ways.  He may have never fully broken with the Second
International.  But prior to 1917, Lenin never supported bourgeois
nationalism ideologically.  And in this period, Lenin is calling for a
revolutionary defeatist position, for the defeat of one's own bourgeoisie.
This took some chutzpah.  And on many of these questions, the council
communists never broke with Second International orthodoxy.  Bordiga never
broke with many aspects of Leninism.  Both, like Lenin, found themselves
partially entrapped in Second International orthodoxy.  So, I think we have
to realize that a revolutionary position on this question can come from odd
places.  I happen to think that Lenin, while not quite right, makes some
valid points on this, unlike people like Mattick, for example, for whom
racial and national oppression do not exist.

> of course, a common problem in lenin was his complete lack of rigor in
> carrying some of his theoretical ideas to their logical conclusions and
> putting them into practice.

Indeed, and there is a lot to critique in Lenin's formulations on this.  He
takes a starting point which reifies 'the national', among other problems.
However, this is Lenin's most lucid and valuable writing, IMO.

For my part, I simply encourage people to think about seriously re-reading
Lenin on this.  I doubt anyone will be tainted by it, but try to re-read as
Lenin, not as the SWP or Militant Tendency or the Spartacist League or WL,
etc.  There is a lot of good stuff to think about to encourage us to move
beyond the sterility of the current debates.

Cheers,
Chris



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