Date: Fri, 20 Jun 1997 14:30:39 -0400
From: Louis Proyect <lnp3-AT-columbia.edu>
Subject: Re: M-I: Failure of imagination


Kelley Bevans:
>
>	First, you have to understand that this was a response to Lou Proyect
>specifically.  Comrade Lou is always touting his peasant rebellions as the
>model for modern socialism because he is a tired old man who thinks he is Che
>Guevara.  Therefore he substitutes analysis of third world politics for a
>coherent theory of socialist revolution, because he and all his hippie ilk
>are failures in the modern industrial world.  
>

Louis P: Bevans, you are continuing to evade my actual arguments. This
comes as no surprise since your understanding of history and genuine
Marxist politics is so minimal. I argued that Marx favored sweeping land
reform in countries under feudal thrall. In capitalist nations with feudal
features, such as Spain in the 1930s, the same urgent task existed.
Socialists have historically defended radical land reform and tried to
guarantee that peasants would not lose their right to land after successful
proletarian revolutions. This is ABC to any Marxist. You are not a Marxist
so you have difficulty grasping this. Your attitude toward the peasantry is
similar to both Stalin's and the IMF: get rid of them ASAP.

>
>	I am not by any means defending capitalism (except in the way that
>Marx himself acknowledges its positive aspects) only suggesting that
>asceticism, especially comfortable, academia-nourished asceticism, is a
>poor substitute for socialism.  This 20-hour week nonsense, first proposed
>as an "answer" to France's problems might well be a boon to worker
>lifestyles.  

Louis P: You have nothing in common with Marx. Marx never thought that
capitalism was "positive" as libertarians like yourself do. Marx simply
said that capitalism revolutionizes the means of production. What is
"positive" is the struggle to abolish private ownership of the means of
production. You are blissfully ignorant of what Marx wrote, aren't you.
Would you like me to send you a copy of the Communist Manifesto out to you
in Jersey City?

With respect to Bevan's reference to the 20 hour work week in Jospin's
France, he still refuses to reply to the original argument I was making. I
argued that socialists should attempt to present an alternative to the
current capitalist system that he is so in love with and that this
alternative should be able to describe a world of economic justice and
unalienated labor. One such element of this future world would be a
shortened work week, so that people could spend time writing poetry or
hiking in the woods rather than chained to a desk or an assembly-line. A
shortened work week in capitalist France is simply a demand that trade
unions and left parties might raise in order to put more people to work. It
HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH COMMUNISM. If I was interested in discussing
capitalist reform in France, I would have made it clear. Kelley Bevans is
so disengaged with the ongoing dialog on this list that he can't even
figure out that this was *not* what I was referring to. What a dunce.
>
>

 Lou Proyect, and others
>fear commerce because they don't understand it.  Therefore, they
>immediately construct ways to kill commerce along with capitalism.  They
>want to regulate it and calculate it to death because they fear it, and
>they fear giving actual economic power to the proletariat because the
>proletariat likes to shop and Walmart instead of natural food stores in
>Greenwich Village.  Of course this kind of false asceticism has a long
>history under capitalism.  
>

Louis P: Commerce means capitalism, doesn't it? When Kelley Bevans says
that I and others "fear giving actual economic power to the proletariat
because the proletariat likes to shop and Walmart insted of natural food
stores in Greenwich Village", he is really pulling out all the stops and
showing how crude and stupid his analysis is. Asceticism is not the issue
whatsoever. Communism could satisfy anybody's material needs. The point
that I have been making over and over, however, is that mindless
exploitation of nature should stop. Under communism there would have to be
very careful study of land usage. Forests and water have to be protected
for future generations. Monoculture of cattle, bananas, coffee and tobacco
through most of Latin and Central America is not the best use of soil and
water. The human race organized under communism would very likely opt to
produce foodstuffs rather than coffee and tobacco. This is not asceticism,
it is common sense.

>
>	I, on the other hand, envision giving workers direct ownership of
>their factories, and letting the chips fall where they may. 
(clip)

>	I may be an iconoclastic socialist, and I may have to spend a lot
>of time here reminding my comrades of the revolutionary aspects of
>capitalism, but I am a socialist, nonetheless.  
>

Louis P: Whatever you are, Kelley Bevans, you are clearly not a Marxist.
(And why are you calling people "comrade" all of a sudden? You were being
much more honest when you called them Mr. or Mrs. since this communicated
your political and social distance, if not outright hostility, much more
accurately.)

As should be obvious, you are here to confront and antagonize Marxists. You
are a left libertarian/syndicalist and your ideas clash with everybody
else's. Now I could join an anarchist list and play the same role you play
here: to provoke and annoy people. I could start threads on how Trotsky was
correct in suppressing the Kronstadt rebellion or how the anarchists fucked
up in Spain, etc. and get everybody annoyed as they attempted to refute me.

Why don't I?

Because I have better things to do with my time as you clearly don't. I am
interested in researching the Marxist project, in increasing my knowledge.
If I spent my time on a list whose aims I was hostile to, I would start to
feel a little creepy. I would start to feel like some of those jackass
students who are fans of Rush Limbaugh and then enroll in a feminism or
black studies class, sharing none of the interests of the other students.
As I raised my libertarian critique of affirmative action, they would glare
at me and I would start to feel very uncomfortable and sink back in my seat.

Kelley Bevans, on the other hand, lives to receive that type of glare. It
doesn't bother him when people either ignore him studiously as most do, nor
does it bother him when I expose his gross ignorance and stupidity. I guess
any attention he gets from me is important to him.

Kelley Bevans has a different psychology than normal people. He is not
interested in a conversation. He is interested in nothing but arguments. He
is what is known as a troll on the Internet. We used to get many more
trolls in the past, but thankfully most have disappeared. Bevans is a
sophisticated troll. While most of his arguments revolve around how rotten
people like Lenin and Castro are and how "positive" capitalism is, he is
careful to make the ritual genuflection in the name of socialism. This is
an empty gesture, however, coming from somebody whose true enthusiasms lie
in "commerce" rather than "communism".

(By the way, I refuse to call this individual "enlightened" anymore. My
typing fingers rebel from the task. Until the troll starts using a real
name, I will refer to the name attached to the panix.com account he uses.)



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