Date: Tue, 18 Mar 1997 09:25:57 -0500 (EST)
From: Louis N Proyect <lnp3-AT-columbia.edu>
Subject: M-I: Reply to Shane Mage


On Mon, 17 Mar 1997, Shane Mage wrote:

> 
> This is strange.  Where in the world are "etc."?  Why talk of  "Zaire" when
> the "rebels" (whose overwhelming mass support is now evident) call for the
> liberation of  (Lumumba's) Congo, not (Mobutu's) "Zaire?"  And why does a
> blind and desperate popular uprising in the smallest and most backward
> country of the Balkans  belong in the same sentence with a victorious
> popular revolution in the largest and potentially most productive country
> of Africa?  And what can "imperfect and semicloaked manifestations of the
> proletarian revolution" possibly signify?  Is "the proletarian revolution"
> some God that chooses to manifest itself now here now there, in this or
> that disguise?
> 

Louis: Shane, I wrote these words in haste while trying to unload one
database into another. I think a more correct formulation would probably
be something like: 

"Zaire and Albania are undergoing deep insurrectionary upheavals that
potentially can lead in an anti-capitalist direction. Just as Marx was
preoccupied by all sorts of inchoate resistance to capitalist rule
throughout the 19th century, so should we be in the 20th. There are
lessons to be drawn from the Zapatista revolt, the Senderoso struggle in
Peru, and even the Islamic fundamentalist revolt in Algeria. 

There is a tendency for Marxists to view the proletarian revolution as an
event like a football game where the two major classes of society line up
on either side of a barricade under their respective programs, with all
i's dotted and t's crossed. This has never happened in history and never
will. 

Capitalism has a tendency to keep these lines of demarcation muddy. Since
the capitalist class is so small numerically, it tries to bind sections of
the working-class and petty-bourgeosie to itself. During the early stages
of proletarian revolution, there will be all sorts of confusion with
respect to class loyalties."


(By the way, Marty Davis showed me your PhD thesis last night which he
lavished praise on. He says you are a "genius". I hope you can use some of
those brain-cells to help steer marxism-international away from the
dead-end Stalinophobia which will surely destroy it and leave you, me and
the rest of us homeless.)







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