From: "Harald Beyer-Arnesen" <haraldba-AT-online.no>
Subject: Re: AUT: Re: Fwd: More on 'leftist' redbaiting of the anti-war movement
Date: Fri, 7 Feb 2003 22:32:12 +0100



----- Original Message -----
From: "Scott Hamilton" <s_h_hamilton-AT-yahoo.com>
To: <aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu>
Sent: 6. februar 2003 18.26
Subject: Re: AUT: Re: Fwd: More on 'leftist' redbaiting of the anti-war
movement


I will not enter into you silly "empiricist" remarks, beyond
saying thay I always been just as "anti-empircist" as you
can get --  whether that is good or bad -- and however
you define dialectical  thought you certainly do not find any
such thing in the texts you and political friends write.
But being critical to empirism  is not the same as going
blindfolded through life, nor does it make the world less
concrete. A certain Marx understood that well, despite his
and Engels support for capitalist wars. Without his degree
of concreteness -- ability to see the particular --  there
would neither have been any "dialectical method" and
thought.


<< The point is that imperialism is an economic and
(secondarily) political system, not a foreign policy.
We should be wary of equating imperialism with some of
the most visible symptoms of imperialism - with
conquest, intervention, sabotague and subterfuge etc -
in the same way as we should be wary of equating
capitalism with nasty bosses or the repressive parts
of the state. >>

So why do you not tell your friends in WSWS that,
so they do not have to makes such fools of themselves?
That of course might require some of that dialectical
thought, which is something else than throwing
out the name "dialectics". Whatever it entaills -- and I
do not want to enter into that discussion -- It is also some-
thing very else than an endeless mantras born out of
fear of critical thought.
<< Was Tito destablised by the West in the 40s and the
50s? I suspect it would be difficult to argue that he
was, yet it is still fair to lay the blame for the
bureaucratic nature of Tito's regime with the West,
because the pressure of imperialism produced the
bureaucratic degeneration of the Russian revolution
and of the world workers' movement, allowing the likes
of Tito to act as they did. Abundant empirical
evidence could be brought to bear to make this
argument, but it could not be accessible or admissable
to an empiricist. One would need to use the
dialectical method to show the connections between the
Russian and Yugoslav milieu. >>


Intersting to hear that some Thing called "imperialism"
simply "produced the bureaucratic degeneration
of the Russian revolution". Is this supposed to be
dialectics? I think not. Positivism perhaps. Or rather
something beyond thought. But anyway, what was
important in this context was not the bureaucratic
nature of Titoist regime in itself, but the particular
capitalist competion *between* bureaucratic fiefdoms.
Any halfway (dialectical) understanding at all of the
break-up of Yugoslavia would have to take that
specific heritage of Titoism into account.

<<I t's true that ideas enjoy a certain autonomy -
sometimes a great deal of autonomy - and no doubt
events in the Balkans were at times greatly influenced
by ideologies rooted in the material conditions,
conditions that were themselves set largely by the
place of the region in the world economy.  But it is
dangerous to forget that the root of these ideologies,
because to forget this is to absolve the imperialist
countries of their responsibility for the region's
plight. Thus absolved, they tend to scrub up pretty
well, as liberal democracies to the nasty
dictatorshops of Milosevic and co, and become 'lesser
evils' or even potential liberators in any conflict.
We've already seen Australia looking pretty good next
to Indonesia, and the UN comparing well to Iraq for
one or two people.>>


Personally I do not think these idea enjoy much
of "an autonomy," they function within and as a
part of a context, and are not so much necessarily
ideas as memories, mentalities and fears brought
forth by particular (armed) conditions. But let us
skip that rather complex but important issue. Who
are forgetting "the roots of these ideologies?" If
you and the WSWS had given such things even
a thought, I would have postivly surprised. And it
cannot be answered by simple saying
"imperialism" or "fuck" . Still I am incled to think
the answers both quite simple and almost but
unfortunately one might say, not  quite beyond
comprehesion. There was a certain kind of banality
-- however deadly -- linked to it too.

"That they are rooted rooted in the material
conditions, rooted in the material conditions,
conditions that were themselves set largely by the
place of the region in the world economy" while
a self-evident truth -- things do not tend
to deveope in a vacuum -- but saying that something
is "rooted in the material conditions" in itself tells
nothing. Everything is rooted within a material world.
So it just might be intersting to know if you have some
thoughts beyond that. And don't come telling me
there was an economical crisis: I already know, and
I do not need to be told that this was a contributing
factor. But there were a similar crisis throughout the old
sphere "real socilialism," and while the medicine
form IMF etc was pretty much the same, fortunately
the Yugoslavian civil war was not replayed
everywhere.

" ... responsibility for the region's plight," this could
say to be good liberal thought. Nothing in itself wrong
with that. But It does not get us far towards under-
standing the whole, in terms of poltical economy so
to speak. And I am anyway not too interested in the morals
of the high and mighty. But what is obvious that you
arguing here entirely within a so-called liberal frame-
work, worried that by saying nasty thing about Milosevic
and co, the rulers of Indonesia etc, I am thereby
"absolv [ing] the imperialist countries of their
responsibility".



<< Nor can an empiricist understand that NATO's inter-
ventions in the Balkans would have had to be opposed
even if they were bloodless, or indeed saved lives,
because they were interventions which strenghtened a
system which around  the world every month causes far
more deaths than Milsosevic ever did >>

Apart from me not being an "empiricist," you forget  to
mention that I was the first to explictitly make your
point above. No wonder, given that is very old anarchist terrain,.
But then it is ability to have more than one thought in
the head again. But let us take your in itself logic one
step further. It is self.evidently true what you say,  just
as "a system which around  the world every month
causes far more deaths than Milsosevic ever did" also
is some respect is strenghtened by some women
calling the police for protection, but more significantly
here, the "system which around  the world every month
causes far more deaths than Milsosevic ever did"
is also immensely reinforced by regimes as
those of Milososevic, Saddam and so on, just as it
the regime of Stalin worked towards prolonging
the lifespan of a "system which around  the world
every month causes far more deaths than
Milsosevic ever did". 

This is what is called wholistic, and personally
I would also say dialectical thinking. A way of thought
that see everybody apart from a few actors as acted
upon, is instrumental thought at is most crudest, and
unsurprsingly enough at this level tends to turn into
pure metaphysics. 

You argue almost as the world were divided into
a capitalist and a capitalist-free zone. On the surface,
from a purely "empiricist" point of view -- and here I
think the term is called for -- it may of course appear
that Iraq and USA were not contributing parts and
expressions of the same historically produced
global capitalist system of materially mediated
social realtions. But there are no reasons to believe
this to be true.
        .

Harald



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