Date: Tue, 08 Apr 1997 17:58:06 +0200
Subject: M-G: Re: M-I: Nationalism (Fwd from moderator)


At 16:20 1997-04-08 +0300, you wrote:
Zeynep wrote;
>Someone summed up what happened for two centuries in a few paragraphs,
>concluding with;
>
>>>This sums up the revolutionary heritage of  Marxism, Bolshevism and 
>>>Trotskyism on this question today. It enables us to explain why in 
>>>times of crisis, nationalism comes to the fore, as rival national or 
>>>ethnic leaders compete for influence over terrritory which they can 
>>>offer to imperialism as its local agents. 
>
>With half a paragraph about what's happening today. I won't reproduce the
>whole post to spare the agony.
>
>That's exactly what I was referring to when I said "in this cyberseminar if
>we get big abstractions, we'll have nothing".

Is political clarity on such and important question which has caused so
much blood to be shed "nothing"?
>
>I find this attitude incredibly stupid and unfruitful. Say we have a
>complicated problem like the rise of political islam and its attraction to
>many working class people and the urban poor in various islamic capitalist
>nations? "Religion is the opium of the masses". What else do we need to know
>anyway.

Well, if you want to have a discussion on the if and why's of this I think
it would be fine. we could start for example with the Iranian "revolution"
and the role it played in this religious revival and Islam.
Not to mention the key role that the Iranian left played in the victory of
the Islamic fundementalists. In that perhaps lies the key to finding clarity.

It could have gone the other way you know if the Tudah party and various
"maoist" influenced organisations had not taken the political path that
they did. We could have had and Iranian October and then perhaps we would
not be talking about ythe revival of Islamic fundementalism. 
>
>The author says:
>
>>The result is the emergence of imperialist proxy wars in which whole 
>>populations are mobilised by appeals to  nationalism  [Croat vs 
>>Serb], ethnicity [Tutsi and Hutu], religion [Hamas vs Zionism] behind 
>>the formation of bourgeois mini-states offering themselves up for 
>>super-exploitation.. 
>
>Right. That explains the whole phenomenon. No need to worry about the
>details. The Hamas kids throwing rocks at Isreali APCs and getting shot want
>to offer a bourgeois mini-state to imperialism, HADEP women marching with
>the colors of the Kurdish flag are also in the line to offer a bourgeois
>mini-state to imperialism.
>
>I remember something about the Marxist method. You're supposed to start from
>the concrete, before abstracting. This kind of stuff looks more like
>abstract -> abstract -> abstract -> abstract (boring -> boring -> boring).
>

Zeynep, the above is very touching, (especially about the Hama kids
throwing stones! Well, I have thrown my fare share of stones and in fact
fire bombs. But it does not change the fundementals of trying to forge a
political leadership that not only have the correct political line but can
allso deliver the revolutionary practice! Whether it be in the form of a
small propaganda group, a national party in a specific country or a
International with pretentions of leading struggles in many countries.

For example the above paragraph which is quite politically correct but
makes you sick because you are thinking about the little kids throwing
rocks or the Kurdish Women marching under a certain flag.

The point is translating the political correct position both into
propaganda that can be understood by the masses and lead to action which
moves the struggle forward. Thus with the little kids throwing stones and
their fundemental wrong idea of the jews being the enemy must be combatted
with a line of "not Arab against jew, but class against class!"
so that the jewish and Arab kids start throwing the stones in the right
direction.

Now Lenin I am sure was pretty aware that the trenches in World War One for
example were certainly a far more dangerous place to be in then let say the
west bank at present. And I am quite sure he understood the horror of it
all. But it did not stop him from taking on the then dominant line of the
Second International and struggling for political clarity! His line was
Turn the Imperialist war into a class war and he certainly did not have a
great following to go hopping out in those trenches to tell people about it.

The truth is that history has show that there are people throwing stones
(and much worse) all the time just as women have marched under all kinds of
flags. But the point is in which direction are they throwing the stones and
what color are the flags and banners marching under.

This anti-theory outburst is unfortunately not going to help those little
Hama kids or Kurdish Women one bit! Or do you think that Lenin for example
was doing a bunch of empty sloganeering when he raised the slogan
"Turn the imperialist war into Proletarian Revolutions!"?

I am quite sure that you think that Dave's excellent article on the basics
of the National question are quite boring when you feel your whole body
itching to get out their and march with those Kurdish women. But the point
is that in order to march I hope that we have a theory which can back up
all this activity in heading towards the goals that we set and not just
activism that leads to new blood baths and new rounds of defeats under new
flags. That is why Marx made the correct assumption that the working
man/women have no country and the only thing that they have to lose is
their chains...

Warm regards
Bob Malecki


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