From: "cwright" <cwright-AT-21stcentury.net>
Subject: AUT: Fw: When Analysis Is No Analysis At All
Date: Wed, 3 Oct 2001 20:44:03 -0500


I am forwarding this as part of the "dialogue" raised by the News and
Letters Statement and the critique of it I sent to them.  Frankly, it makes
the litle brawl between Fabian and I look like passionate love.  Needless to
say, I will have nothing to do with a group which lays out this kind of
slander and I am unfortunately forced to retract any recommendation I have
made about News and Letters as a decent, thoughtful organization.  I am also
saddened that this will end some personal relations with people I had grown
rather fond of, but once one is a fascist, well there is no room for any
relations with Raya's Anointed, are there?

I am not sending out my response to this list since I think that most of you
would not need it to see this for what it is.  I am interested to hear
responses on the political level, though there is precious little here that
is political.  I am also pointing this out to show how disorienting this
whole attack has been.  We have to do better.

Sad and angry,
Chris

-----Original Message-----
From: News & Letters [mailto:nandl-AT-igc.org]
Sent: Monday, October 01, 2001 11:34 PM

There are only a few things worth noting in Chris Wright's polemic. The
first is the disgusting racism that drips from every word of it. The
statement by News and Letters Committees' REB makes no equation between
Muslims or Arabs in general and the fascist terrorist attacks in New
York.
Muslim, Middle Eastern and Arab spokespersons have also denied any such
connection, from the Revolutionary Association of the Women of
Afghanistan
all the way to Hamas, including important statements by revolutionary
Palestinians like Mahmoud Darwish and Edward Said.

In the face of this unanimous disavowal, Wright insists upon a
connection
-- it is only Chris Wright who makes a principled attack on mindless
terrorism an attack on "all Muslims." He is not the mirror image of Bush
or
the U.S media, even, but of the howling mobs of Bridgeview.

This is only surprising in that Wright claims to have undergone a
political
evolution since the Gulf War, when the same inherent racism led him to
place the burden of the American revolution upon the unwilling backs of
the
conscripts of Saddam Hussein's Iraqi army. He has forgotten nothing and
learned nothing.

It is beyond ironic to hear the hypocritical "support" of Muslims from a
man who has spent the last decade ignoring the genocide of hundreds of
thousands of Muslims in Bosnia and Kosova. He didn't lift a finger, nor
a
tongue of indignation, despite the fact that there was considerable
political activity around this issue in Chicago, some of it organized by
News and Letters Committees.

The key to Wright's failure is his attack on humanism, including
obviously
Marx's Humanism, although he passes over the direct quote from Marx on
"positive humanism, beginning from itself." (It is fine to be considered
an
idiot alongside the idiot Marx by the world historic genius Wright.)
Rosa
Luxemburg stated very clearly the Marxist concept of "socialism or
barbarism," by the way, if it is the word "barbarism" that Wright
objects
to. The attack in New York and, yes, Washington, D.C. qualifies as
barbarism in this sense.

The failure to see this -- the hideously abstract view of the deaths of
real women, men, and children -- indicates a petit bourgeois
consciousness
intoxicated by the "audacity" (in the fascist sense) of the attacks. It
shows a complete isolation from the struggles of live human beings, from
the thoughts and passions of the working people of the world.

Wright's theoretic and human poverty reduces his political role to that
of
a conceptual ambassador for the fascist terrorists. He puts a "Marxist"
face upon the attack in New York, but in terms of Osama bin Laden's
previously stated rhetoric it could as well have been an attack, not
against a symbol of capital per se, but rather against "Jewish finance
capital." And who searches for the rationality behind the actions and
thoughts of a Hitler?

Wright's pseudo-revolutionary anti-humanism finally places him in a very
specific historical category, that of Strasserism. It is one thing for
Wright to lay himself down to die in this miserable historic ditch, and
another even more absurd thing for him to present this wretchedness as a
contribution to Marxism. Mussolini made no contribution to revolutionary
thought; Radek praising Schlageter made no such contrbution, nor did
Stalin
in his alliances with Schehringer and Hitler; nor did Mao in his
alliance
with apartheid South Africa; nor did the Terza Posizione with their
slogan
of "Hitler and Mao united in struggle."

To find something anti-imperialist, or anti-capitalist, or
rationalizable
in the act of slitting the throats of flight attendants, terrorizing
three
and four year old children in the moments before you murder them, and
flying to a paradise of virgins (as Mohammed Atta wrote) over the
crushed
and immolated bodies of thousands of innocent victims would certainly be
news to Marx or any other genuine revolutionary. But it isn't, and the
genuine revolutionary movement exists to shut up such errant nonsense.

                                                -- Gerard Emmett



>In their statement "Against the Double Tragedy", the resident editorial
>board of News and Letters made a series of comments which, in the face
>of Bush's current drive to war and the climate of xenophobia and
>intensified anti-Muslim racism, must be sharply rebuked.  The
>concessions to U.S. chauvinism, the use of standard anti-Muslim
>caricatures in place of a Marxist analysis of the source of Islamic
>fundamentalism and its relationship to globalization, and the general
>bowing to Euro-centrism underline the failure to explain why the
>politics of "Oppose US Imperialism" offer no guidance in the wake of
>current events.
>The absence of analysis begins right away when the REB states, "The
>Sept. 11 attacks have nothing to do with any struggle against
>capitalism, injustice, or U.S. imperialism. They were a brutal act of
>violence against U.S. workers that has no rational cause, legitimacy,
or
>justification."  This is simply wrong.  To reject the possibility of
>rational cause in the same breath as legitimacy or justification is to
>give up any explanatory power.  This may be comforting, but it reduces
>the people who carried this out, obviously Muslims, to being mindless.
>Since N&L has already indicated this above in their comment on
'mindless
>terrorism', they have chosen the same ground as the US media.
>The obfuscation of events continues with the statement that "No group
>took responsibility for the attacks, and not a single political demand
>or proclamation was issued by anyone. It is hard to discern any
>political content to these acts, presumably carried out by Islamic
>fundamentalists under the leadership of Osama bin Laden. They were
>simply geared to kill as many people as possible, without any regard
for
>class, race, or background. Such cruelty could only have been carried
>out by the most reactionary, backward elements imaginable."
>It is not hard to discern willful blindness in this idiotic statement.
>They targeted the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and somewhere in
>Washington D.C., such as Congress or the White House.  If anything,
this
>was an attack aimed directly at the symbols of U.S. military, political
>and economic power.  Had it been geared towards 'simply killing as many
>people as possible, it would have been done at 10am or 2pm, not 9am.
>Had they wanted to cause maximum loss of life, they would have driven a
>plane into a Major League Baseball game, where the death toll would
most
>certainly have been thousands more.
>Certainly, this was done with no regard for class, race, gender, or
>background.  1,400 Middle Eastern and South Asian Americans lost their
>lives in this incident.  So did many African Americans and Latinos.
And
>clearly, the vast bulk of those killed were working class.  But is it
on
>this basis that we have to call the people who did this the "most
>reactionary, backward elements imaginable"?  Is this act more cruel
than
>the one million people killed in Iraq by the US since 1991?  Is this
act
>more cruel than what Israel has done to the Palestinians?  Is this act
>more cruel than the starvation and death by disease that happens at
such
>a horrific rate worldwide simply because it benefits capital?  I think
>not.  Rather, this act is part and parcel of the daily terror which
>capital exacts upon the world's population.  What makes this special is
>NOT the degree of death and misery.  Rather, this is special because
>this is the first time since the 19th century that the U.S. has
actually
>been attacked on the mainland.  This is the first time since World War
>II that U.S. militarization for 'national defense' has appeared as more
>than a pure sham.  This is what is hooking a lot of people into
>blind-faith patriotism and militarism.
>So why the references to 'mindless', 'the most reactionary, backwards
>elements', the denial of rationality, and so on?  This kind of approach
>does nothing more or less than support the racist construction of all
>Muslims as irrational, mindless fanatics.  It supports the idea that
>Islam is, as a body, more reactionary and backward than any other
>religion.
>During a brief interlude in this non-analysis we get treated to a dose
>of economic catastrophism as follows:  "First, the economic impact of
>the attack on the World Trade Center--tens of billions of dollars of
>damage were done and many airlines now teeter on the brink of
bankruptcy
>as a result of the disruption of air travel--will almost certainly send
>the U.S. into a full recession."  While not offensive, this does seem
to
>fail to understand capital on some relatively serious level.
>Catastrophe is essential to capital's survival.  Catastrophes like
these
>destroy dead labor (the WTC), which no longer generates value, allowing
>capital to exploit new living labor in construction and myriad other
>ways.  For the rest, airline travel will recover fairly quickly because
>that is the only way to cover long distances efficiently; planes will
>have to be refitted; security systems and procedures upgraded; military
>order increased; and so on.  The fluctuation caused by this in relation
>to 'confidence in the market' will probably blow over quickly.
>Historically, things like this have not caused more than market
>fluctuations.  If we do plunge into the depths, then it will not have
>been caused by this attack, but rather, this attack will simply have
>been the proverbial 'stick' that broke the market's back.  That does
not
>mean this will not, in fact already is, hurting tens, maybe hundreds,
of
>thousands of workers.  The real 'economic' effects will come from the
>class struggle over whether or not capital can use this as an
>opportunity to impose a higher level of exploitation, as part of the
>process of recomposing class relations in its own favor.
>As the REB begins to wind up the statement, they treat us to a banality
>which pits progressive "Western" (quotation marks will not save you,
>comrades!) culture/society against Islamic Barbarism.  "These
>"explanations" misconstrue the nature of the forces which conducted the
>attacks. Reactionary Islamic fundamentalism is not simply driven by
>hatred of U.S. imperialist acts against Iraq, Palestine, or any other
>country. Islamic fundamentalism is just as much driven by hatred of
>feminism, homosexuality, workers' rights, etc. Such groups as
>Afghanistan's Taliban, Algeria's FIA, and the terrorist cells in Egypt
>which have murdered Marxist professors as well as indigenous writers
and
>singers represent a violent rejection of everything
>"Western"--especially those aspects of western society created through
>decades of struggles by workers, women, gays and lesbians and
minorities
>for a more open and free society."
>Firstly, this ignores the choice of the United States.  Why here?
>Because the United States represents the center of Western capitalist
>power, not just economically but politically and militarily.  The U.S.
>actions in the Middle East and the rest of the world certainly do make
>us a target.  The U.S. certainly does make us a target by its specific
>actions.  There is no doubt that all of the actions and policies of the
>United States make it the pole of attraction for these kind of attacks,
>
>Secondly, this kind of Islamic fundamentalism is NOT anti-Western or
>anti-Modernist or anti-capitalist.  This is exactly where the banality
>of defending 'Westernism' comes to light and the long trek of the word
>Humanism returns to its origins in an Us vs Them dialectic of
>'Civilzation vs Barabarism'.  Islamic fundamentalism parallels Western
>religious development and ideas in some ways, harkening back to the
role
>played by early Methodism, Calvinism, and Puritanism in the creation
and
>disciplining of the working class.  Islamic fundamentalism uses older
>ideologies and cultural practices, but revises them in accordance with
>the needs of capitalist accumulation and modernization.  Nowhere has
>Islamic fundamentalism tried to restrict the growth of capital.  Osama
>bin Laden is a very rich capitalist with a family construction
business.
>In fact, he was building roads and infrastructure for the Mujahedeen in
>Afghanistan during the Soviet invasion.  Islamic fundamentalism seeks
to
>control and discipline the population to capital accumulation and
>towards production and reproduction.  Nobody is questioning whether
>their acts are reprehensible and horrific, but they are not
>counter-posable to some more humane 'Western' practices qua 'Western'.
>If we mystify Islamic fundamentalism by taking it out of the context of
>global capital and the transformation of social relations in those
>countries, then we will certainly miss what is going on.  If we do not
>see Islamic fundamentalism as part and parcel of the reaction of global
>capital against workers, women, gays and lesbians and minorities, then
>we must make these terrorists into devils.  Rather than that, Islamic
>fundamentalism reflects the class struggle, the struggle against women,
>against racial and religious minorities, etc. which marks the entire
>world in this period of so-called globalization.  If it takes a
>particularly harsh form here, it seems, then we should consider that
the
>wretchedness of life has a direct effect on the barbarity induced, such
>as in Rwanda, Sudan, Somalia, the former Yugoslavia, and other places
of
>note.
>Also, this idiotic paragraph assumes that there is something
>fundamentally 'Western' about women's liberation, workers' liberation,
>racial tolerance, free sexuality, etc.  This is positively offensive.
>'The West' reintroduced mass slavery and the slave trade on a scale
>never before imagined.  The 'West' introduced the categories of
>heterosexual and homosexual in ways that Othered homosexual practices
as
>part and parcel of generating the 'home' as the site of un-waged
>reproduction and all 'unproductive' sexuality as 'evil'.  'The West'
is,
>if nothing else, synonymous with the capital-labor relation and all the
>other horrors that go along with it.  In so far as struggles here have
>broken that down and expanded the realm of Freedom, those struggles
>could be considered anti-'Western', precisely because they are
generated
>by 'Western' society.  This attachment to 'Western' society is an
>attachment to the contradictions of the Enlightenment and Enlightenment
>'humanism', which I suppose should not be surprising for an
organization
>that calls itself 'Marxist-Humanist'.
>Finally, we get a tasty treatment of News and Letters' ongoing
>submission to nationalism and the state in theory, having received
heavy
>doses of xenophobia and anti-Muslim chauvinism.  "The lesser-evilism
>which underlay much of the Left's silence on Bosnia, and its refusal to
>support the movement for national self-determination in Kosova, has
only
>succeeded in strengthening the power of U.S. imperialism. The reason so
>many despair of the struggle for freedom and turn to patriotism,
>xenophobia and statism is that they see no liberatory alternative to
>capitalism. Instead of responding to each political crisis by repeating
>the same old slogans against "U.S. imperialism," revolutionaries have a
>responsibility to oppose all societies and tendencies based on
alienated
>human relations while projecting a positive vision of a new society,
>what Karl Marx called "positive humanism, beginning from itself." Only
>in that way can humanity see that there is an alternative to
>capitalism-imperialism."
>Part of the problem lay in this defense of national self-determination.
>After being against statism, patriotism, and xenophobia, News and
>Letters would have us be for national self-determination.  That idea
>means nothing without statism, patriotism and xenophobia.  There is no
>nation without a state.  There is no such thing as national
>self-determination for the working class.  The epoch in which capital
>had not yet enveloped the whole world, in which the capital-labor
>relation did not dominate all other social relations, such a notion was
>relevant because the spread of the capital-labor relation spread the
>power of the working class.  But in the last 50 or so years, in what
few
>places can we say that capital has not become dominant, not simply as
>the formal subsumption of labor to capital, but as the real
subsumption?
>
>The idea of national liberation is nothing other than a reactionary
>utopia harkening back to social democracy and Stalinism.  This approach
>does not start from capital as an always-already global society, but as
>a system of national capitals and national states.  It takes the form
to
>be immediately the essence, instead of understanding that the form is
>the mediated appearance of the essence, or rather, the essence in the
>mode of being denied.  National self-determination does not take the
>working class as revolutionary subject but alien class forces (since
for
>women and people of color the issue is not 'national' liberation in any
>meaningful sense.)  National liberation is the separation of one
>territory from others through the formation of a state that exists to
>draw capital to itself and to ensure the control over labor within its
>boundaries.  What currently existing state does not perform these
tasks?
>The maintenance of such positions in spite of the substantive
>transformation of social relations globally into the real subsumption
of
>labor by capital reflects the under-theorization of the changes that
>have taken place since the period of so-called 'classical imperialism'
>as understood by Lenin and a host of others (a position which always
>started theoretically from the nation-state and national capitals to
>begin with, rather than global capital versus global labor.)  The
>position of national self-determination will not offer any resolution
to
>the conflicts existing in the majority world because the possibility of
>independent capitalist development is unrealistic.  The failures of the
>post-WWII national liberation movements highlight this failure.  If
>anything, the countries which engaged in national revolutions tended to
>develop capitalist relations less thoroughly and often had political
>regimes as or more repressive in relation to the working class than
>other states.
>I agree that lesser-evilism is misplaced, but not because national
>self-determination is at issue, but because the only mode of liberation
>left open is the self-liberation of the working class.  The appeal to
>national self-determination led to the position of defending the KLA,
an
>organization whose anti-working class tendencies were both intrinsic
and
>explicit, even before the post-NATO bombing period.  As in so many
>cases, rather than the working class of Kosova being seen as Subject,
>the KLA became Subject in substitution for the working class, a
>classically Leninist inversion of the Party-Class relationship.  In
>Kosova, as in Serbia, there is no way in which Kosova or Serbia could
be
>seen as instances of opportunities for national self-determination in
>anything but a reactionary sense.  The absence of the working class for
>itself should in no way drive us to believe that any of the
alternatives
>could substitute for working class self-activity.  This raises broader
>questions of whether or not Kosova was 'nationally oppressed', which I
>think could be clearly defended.  Even so, the question is what is the
>point of departure for the resolution of that oppression.  I see no
>means of claiming that national self-determination offered Kosova
>workers an actual respite to their social conditions of exploitation
and
>oppression.)
>The statement of the REB should not be passed off as a more
enlightened,
>more rigorous Marxism.  It is not even an analysis as such, but the
>refusal of an analysis! Nowhere do we get even a glimpse of an
>explanation that might address the question that was so fervently asked
>by the public, and so shamelessly evaded by the politicians and media,
>of "Why us?"  It seems that News and Letters will have to take its
place
>alongside the rest of the Left in neither deciphering the causes nor
>mounting an adequate reply to the latest tragedy of capital's murderous
>'globalization'.  However, News and Letters will also have to add to
>that miserable moment shameful concessions to national chauvinism and
>utter submission to anti-Muslim rhetoric.
>
>
>Chris Wrightg
>Client Support Services
>Phone: (312)853-5505
>chrisd.wright-AT-gecapital.com
>Fax: (312)853-0233



++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

"Human Power Is Its Own End."--Karl Marx

News and Letters Committees / NEWS & LETTERS
36 S. Wabash, Room 1440
Chicago IL 60603
U.S.A.

TEL   312 236 0799
FAX   312 236 0725
nandl-AT-igc.org
www.newsandletters.org



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