From: "Greg Schofield" <g_schofield-AT-dingoblue.net.au>
Subject: Re: AUT: alternatives to capitalist cuba?
Date: Tue, 12 Mar 2002 23:13:44 +0800


Tahir, I have snipped the bits from your last email where we might begin to hammer things out, I never worry about badly expressing ideas as everyone does it all the time and it is churlish to hang of statements that may well be said better another way.

We do have some disagreements, there are some details I would like to take issue with, but let us leave this aside and concentrate on the main parts where there is more inherent agreement then might first meet the eye.

Tahir:
But I think you have the idea that revolution spreads easily across one country but not so easily across borders. Isn't that what most of your message is implying? And I say that that's because the true internationalist movement is only being born now. In the earlier days they used to form CPs for each separate nation. Even Bordiga did that.

Greg:
There are two things going on here. First we are in a very different position then in the past which I believe you have correctly captured in the three last sentences above. We will not be recreating the thrid international nor the foruth for that matter, internationalism, effective and practical is almost in our laps.

It is at that point I would like to separate things out, if anything given the internet things move faster over borders then they move within them (that is pentrating into the social fabric of society in a political way). Whether or not this is different to in the past is a mute question. But up pops the state question - the separate bit.

The state cannot be ignored, for that is where the power of gun lies - it may be seized or smashed (in the anarchist sense) but ignoring it is suicide (this is just common sense I don't think you would disagree). Now I will not say anything about the anarchist alternative (i don't like poking rotten corpses with a stick, though saying this will probably have the thing explode all over me anyhow). Seizure, class seizure, not a party coup, is to my mind a complex problem.

At this point we may have a real disagreement, capitalist state or no, it cannot be sidestepped, even wholesale destruction means contending with it on a real basis. Just as any real struggle grows locally, extends itself, deepens the contradictions and forces itself onward, at various stages all soughts of collisions with all soughts of capitalist bodies is to be expected and the state is just one of these, but one in a very special position.

Now one way of reading your post, is as simply a warning against reformism, another is a warning against another class raising itself up over the proletariat through the state (which we have plenty of historical examples), and of course with any real struggle there is a risk of either or both happening. Do you mean something more than this?

You see internationalism may be far less of a protection against these two things then you seem to imply. I have always had problems with what I consider the undue attention to the socialism in one country (which at the time meant something very different from what it is now taken to mean - ie this was a diplomatic gesture to the West more then any great theoretical statement though of course it was dressed up in those clothes) and as I never weary of pointing out taken as a simple theoretical (and not very profound) statement, aside from its banality, there is nothing per se wrong with it as it is practically meaningless (hence I get upset with people making so much of it - I believe it is just one of less then helpful legacies left by Trotsky).

I have not yet seen a clearly argued connection that automatically makes international success a prerequiste of proletarian socialism, though in the long run it is a necessity for developing proletarian socialism into communism (the latter inconcievable without world transformation). I just don't like getting carts before horses. Engels contemplated that armed conflict was possible between socialist states, in fact, I agree with Engels' less than romantic view of what proletarian socialism might mean in historical practice (ie messy and not solving every problem at once and not above committing stupidities). But then again my abiding interest is history and social evolution so I tend to measure things in generations and liftimes.

Tahir:
<Snip>Reforms are not things that communists do<snip>

Greg:
On this I take pedantic disagreement. It has been some sloppy thinking on the left which identified gaining reforms with reformism. Yes reformism is about using reforms, but using reforms to bargain away the power of the proletariat and turn it into ploitical power of a "leadership", reformism needs capitalism as its mother's milk, but reformism is not the seeking out of reforms.

Read carefully the last chapter of the communist manifesto - the role of communists is to realise the immediate and transitory interests of the working class - nothing could be more of a reform than immediate and transitory interests. Marx's cavaet is simple, so long as we do not loose sight of the long termn interests of the class - that interest to struggle to ultimate class victory, to push past any and every reform gained and push reltentlessly until reforms no longer exist but the will of the class in power.

I am not accusing you of this mistake, the quoite above can be read several ways and many of them I would be sympathetic to.

I suppose my real point is as we about to re-arm ourselves intellectually for the struggles of the future, we have to be prepared to take on the world at a greater level of complexity then pergaps communists did 50 years ago. I therefore bridle on what I percieve as simplistic answers, formlars and magic potions of pronounced positions.



--- Message Received ---
From: Tahir Wood <twood-AT-uwc.ac.za>
To: aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
Date: 12 Mar 2002 16:46:24 +0200
Subject: Re: AUT: alternatives to capitalist cuba?

Greg Schofield
Perth Australia
g_schofield-AT-dingoblue.net.au
_______________________________________________
_______________________________________________

Use LesTecML Mailer (http://www.lestec.com.au/)
* Powerful filters.
* Create you own headers.
* Have email types launch scripts.
* Use emails to automat your work.
* Add comments on receive.
* Use scripts to extract and check emails.
* Use MAID to create taylor-made solutions.
* LesTecML Mailer is fully controlled by REXX.
* A REXX interpreter is freely available.
_______________________________________________
_______________________________________________



     --- from list aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---