Date: Fri, 8 Mar 2002 15:47:31 +0000 (GMT)
From: =?iso-8859-1?q?Scott=20Hamilton?= <s_h_hamilton-AT-yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: AUT: Porto Alegre - Counter Revolutionary ? Parecon...



I didn't go into any detail on Porto Allegre because
it had been kicked around already on this list, and
nobody seemed to have disagreed with my view, except 
Toni Negri, who had only been channeled by Thomas Seay
and was too busy getting Naomi Klein's autograph to
reply to criticisms here. If you look back in the
archives about a month, you can see the discussion,
along with one or two pieces of writing by South
Americans opposed to the summit. 

I would never suggest that every group and every
individual at PA was bad news - it is the meeting as a
whole that was bad. The best groups that attended -
Partido Obrero from Argentina, for instance -
acknowledged this. They were there to split the
meeting along class lines - to argue that cosying up
to cabinet ministers, former Prime Ministers, and
'ethical' entrepeneurs is not the way to change
society, and that embracing the watered-down social
democracy of the Workers Party of Brazil and its
friends (the PA hosts) as a blueprint for the future
is madness, when a revolution originally prompted by
the policies of an ostensibly social democratic party
is unfolding over the border in Argentina.

Michael Albert's comments on Argentina are
interesting, and give some indication of the
shortcomings of his whole political project. He really
is not comfortable with the revolutionary events there
- for instance, after the 'revolutionary days' of
December he decried the use of violence by the
revolutionaries, arguing that 'it will get people
hurt'. This was an extremely mischevious thing to say,
because the violence of the revolutionaries was being
used in self-defence, out of necessity. 

What Albert really objected to, I think, was the
programme of action that created the confrontations
that saw the authorities use violence. Presumably he
wanted the Argentinean working class to go away and
form Parecon study groups. Other denizens of Z Net are
more forthcoming than Michael: Attac, for instance,
issued a press release during the December explosions
which offered support for the new government of Saa
and meekly asked for a handful of reforms that
represented a position far to the right of where the
Argentinean masses were even then. George Monbiot,
another contributor to Z Net, actually tried to praise
Saa's successor, the 'left' Peronist Duhalde, using
the language of the anti-globalisation movement! 

What the likes of Attac, Monbiot, and (in my opinion)
Albert are doing is blocing with a bunch of
*proto-fascists* who were even in December building a
street army to smash the revolution. No clearer
indication of the bankruptcy of liberal politics in
the west could be available. If you want to see a
model for a postcap society, why not have a look at
what huge numbers of ordinary people in Argentina are
creating right now, not the formulae of a few
privileged Western liberals who have never led a major
social movement, let alone a revolution? The Argentina
Solidarity archives are a good place to start:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Argentina_Solidarity/

Cheers
Scott




===="Revolution is not like cricket, not even one day cricket"

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