File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1997/marxism-international.9708, message 266


Date: Wed, 20 Aug 1997 20:36:48 -0400 (EDT)
From: Louis N Proyect <lnp3-AT-columbia.edu>
Subject: Re: M-I: The Madrid Conference


On Wed, 20 Aug 1997, Louis R Godena wrote:

> But what is it they *stand* for?  It seems that the conference was
> overwhelmingly middle-class, rather than working class in composition and
> outlook.  

They typically stand for squatters and other marginalized and semi-lumpen
elements of society. Don't you recall that our own Jerry Levy was
rhapsodic over the importance of the squatters movement for this confab? 
They, as I said, do not have an orientation to the working class. They
seem to favor an alliance between the predominantly middle-class social or
lumpen movements in the developed countries and peasant struggles such as
the Zapatistas. In many ways, this is a throwback to SDS of 1968 or 1969.
Back then it was the student movement plus the Vietcong.  Today it is
squatters plus the Zapatistas. Not exactly my cup of tea. I like those
boring warehouse workers from UPS with all that social power.


> And what is "old-line Stalinism"?  Aren't most of the political
> forms arrayed against the neo-liberal project "Stalinist" in origin or
> methodology, or both?  One thinks of the political forms of Islam and China
> inparticular.  Is the conference just another exercise in "Third Way"
> political fantasy?   
> 

Old-line Stalinism? This would include Jim Hillier's Communist Action
Group and others of this tendency. These are good comrades, but the
historical legacy of Stalin is singularly unattractive. The only people
who are attracted to Stalin in the advanced capitalist countries nowadays
are people who are interested in scandalizing middle-class opinion. What
bigger scandal can one make than extolling Stalin. This is a little bit
like the punk attitude of someone like Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols.
Instead of safety-pins in your eyebrow, you blather on about how "wise" 
the Hitler-Stalin pact was. The net result is the same: are these people
for real?  Oh yes, the conference was just another exercise in "Third Way" 
political fantasy. 


> Answers to these questions would in my view be a bit more helpful than
> quotes from Harry Cleaver or Toni Negri.
> 

Cleaver/Negri are the resident philosophers of this movement. When I wrote
about the Rethinking Marxism conference for Sozialismus I took great pains
to write about Wolff and Resnick. The Madrid conference was for
Cleaver/Negri as the Amherst conference was for Rethinking Marxism
neo-Althusserianism. Its a shame, by the way, that you got snowed out of
the Amherst conference. Me and Doug were dying to meet you. I think a lot
of the tension we have been experiencing lately would be mitigated if you
could come down to NYC and have a drink or two of whiskey with me.

Louis P.



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