File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1997/marxism-international.9710, message 114


From: cbcox-AT-rs6000.cmp.ilstu.edu (Carrol Cox)
Subject: Re: M-I: Re: Zizek on PKs
Date: Tue, 7 Oct 1997 11:55:23 -0500 (CDT)


At the close of his reply to Rakesh, Doug writes:
> 
> Rakesh, on this issue, and on the social democracy issue, you're seeing
> monoliths in place of complex and contradictory phenomena. To say that
> Hitler completed the work of the social dems, or that mass relgious
> uprisings in the U.S. are proto-fascist events, is worthy of the crude
> Marxism of a Malecki or an Oleachea.

I think this is correct as a general characterization of Rakesh's
positions, but that the issue is posed as it is in Rakesh's posts
and Doug's detailed reply is an illustration of how tossing labels
like "fascism" around blurs the debate.

The German social democrats were not fascists, period, but they
were *really* fucked up. It illustrates the disgracefulness of
OLeachea's rhetoric that it suppresses real criticism of social
democracy with the label that stops all debate, "fascist."

And the PKs are not fascist or proto-fascist. They *are* really
fucked up, and in the present state of the left, no organization,
no mass struggles, it is wrong to spend our time and energy
in carefully separating threads in basically fucked up aspects
of the social order. It is always possible to do so in the
abstract; concretely I doubt that "the left" (whatever material
content that has right now) can do any better with the Promise
Keepers than denounce them in public; amongst ourselves engage
in more nuanced analysis, not so much to identify the "positive"
aspects of the PK but to identify and analyze the reality of
the threat they offer.

Carrol


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