Date: Mon, 22 Sep 1997 10:53:40 -0500 From: Doug Henwood <dhenwood-AT-panix.com> Subject: Re: racism & revolution John Ransom wrote: >When did he stop being synonymous with Marxism? Do you seriously mean to >assert that you detect no serious tendencies toward exclusionary >tactics and logic in the history of Marxist thought and practice? etc.... and onto quotes from KM about the "dictatorship of the proletariat." I was away for the weekend and am just catching up, so apologies if this seems out of sequence. What government of any kind doesn't exclude? Challenge capitalist property rights - say a group of strikers occupies a plant, or peasant farmers challenge the right of private propertyholders to enclose previously common land, or a colony tries to liberate itself from its colonizers - and you will end up in jail or the target of military force. What's the alternative to this? Some sort of banal American pluralism that denies the relations of force and power hidden behind all its blather? As Richard Feinberg, formerly of the Overseas Development Council and now of the U.S. National Security Council put it before joining the Clinton administration, democracy only works when there's consensus on the nature of property. Translation: now that death squads and proxy wars have imposed that consensus in Latin America, "democracy" - meaning elections where all the fundamental political questions are ruled out of order - can flourish. Are American Foucaultians just Madisonians in disguise? Doug
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