File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1996/96-10-22.195, message 2


Date: Fri, 18 Oct 1996 10:57:44 -0400 (EDT)
From: Louis N Proyect <lnp3-AT-columbia.edu>
Subject: Notes on Jim Petras


I'm glad that Zeynep brought up Jim Petras's name. I've known of him 
for years and have some strong opinions on what he represents.

Petras is a Sociology Professor at the SUNY in Binghamton. He was 
one of thousands who went through the revolving-door of American 
Trotskyism in the 1960s. He stayed in long enough to get himself a 
proper Marxist education and then went on to carve a career out for 
himself in left academia.

Nowadays Petras positions himself as a foe of all manifestations of 
opportunism and compromise. This wasn't always the case. In the 
early 1970s, he closely identified with the Allende regime in Chile and 
was as surprised as anybody when the "neutral" and "professional" 
Chilean army wiped out the socialist experiment.

This experience chastened him to a very high degree. From that point 
on, this Sociology Professor would identify only with the most 
authentic revolutionary currents, and not the wishy-washy ones like 
the Sandinistas. It was now to be Fidel Castro, the Cuban people and 
Sociology Professor Jim Petras face-to-face with US imperialism.

I sit here now looking at the May, 1990 "NicaNews", a publication of 
the NY Nicaragua Solidarity Network that I used to edit. There is 
an article in it co-authored by Rick Congress and myself on "Some 
Thoughts on Recent Leftist Criticism of the FSLN". It is a reply to 
Petras's article "Flawed Strategies Planted Seeds of Sandinista Defeat" 
that appeared in the "In these Times" of March 21-27, 1990.

This was Petras's main criticism:

"But five more years of intensified warfare and concessions from the 
FSLN created optimal conditions for electoral victory [for UNO], and 
the FSLN committed the strategic mistake of agreeing to elections 
under these circumstances...For the Sandinistas the elections were an 
attempt to end the war and begin development. But they should have 
ended the war and begun reconstruction and development before 
holding an election."

Our reply:

"The new Nicaraguan constitution mandated an election in November 
of 1990. The first election, which the FSLN won with 63% of the vote, 
was in November of 1984. As a concession in the regional peace 
process Ortega agreed to holding the election nine months early. 
Would waiting until November of 1990 given them time 'to end the 
war and begin development?' If not, then -- following Petras's logic -- 
they would then cancel the elections outright. Would this have brought 
peace and development? Far from it. It would have guaranteed a 
renewal of the war, isolated Nicaragua internationally, demoralized 
the people further, and created favorable conditions for a U.S. 
invasion."

Even though I have little sympathy for Petras's generally ultraleftist 
politics, I do try to read everything he writes. He is an important 
barometer of leftish thinking in the academy. I only wish that other 
academicians would err on the ultra-left, as he does. This led me to 
pick up "Empire or Republic", co-authored by Petras and Morris 
Morley. It was sitting on my shelf along with a thousand other books 
I've been meaning to get to. After Zeynep's post, I decided to take a look
at it.

I'm glad I did. It appears to be a valuable little book. It attempts to 
show how consistent Clinton's global strategy is with Reagan and 
Bush's. So much of the left continues to be confused between the 
struggle between Democratic Party "lesser evilism" and Republican 
"ultrarightism", that is useful to have books like this at its disposal.

I quote from the conclusion:

"Class divisions persist and have become accentuated in the United 
States. The classes of empire, the electronic movers of capital world-
wide, are anchored in the international circuits while the classes of the 
republic are rooted in vulnerable and immobile national communities. 
Today the politics of empire (Bush's 'global leadership,' Clinton's 
'enlargement') monopolize the political agenda: global actors permeate 
the Democratic and Republican parties and their political leadership.

But the national economy is straining to the limits to support global 
power. Military and ideological supremacy cannot count on unlimited 
state resources and overseas capital to sustain it. These global 
structures that have facilitated the outflow of capital confront a 
shrinking revenue and tax base. State budget transfers in the form of 
overseas subsidies, loans, and military spending have sapped domestic 
programs. Moreover, in the present context, military and ideological 
dominance is not conducive to accumulating advantages in the New 
World Order. But the elites linked to the new international circuits 
continue to shape the political agenda. Under their influence, 
economists pontificate on the 'global imperatives' and media pundits 
highlight the need for greater 'international competitiveness' -- to 
induce greater productivity, lower wages, and new large state transfers 
>from social programs to corporate subsidies.

The problem of U.S. 'decline' is not due to unfair Japanese competition 
or inability to 'obtain real, even access to the Japanese market'; nor 
does it stem from the failure of American institutions: the 
multinationals are investing...overseas. It is the success of the nation's 
elites in converting the domestic economy into a trampoline for global 
leadership that has seriously undermined the domestic foundations of 
state power and eroded domestic society. It is not a question of 'saving 
and investing' in the abstract or merely converting military to civilian 
production, but rather of transforming the state--from an imperial to a 
republican state--and that means confrontation with the major political 
parties, banks, and corporations that have profited from the 
exploitation of American society and the public treasury in the name 
of global leadership."

Louis Proyect




   

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