File spoon-archives/marxism-thaxis.archive/marxism-thaxis_1997/marxism-thaxis.9711, message 306


From: "jurriaan bendien" <Jbendien-AT-globalxs.nl>
Subject: Re: M-TH: Re: A New Agenda
Date: Fri, 28 Nov 1997 13:46:39 +0100




----------
> From: Dave Bedggood <dr.bedggood-AT-auckland.ac.nz>
> To: marxism-thaxis-AT-jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU
> Cc: marxism-general-AT-jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU
In response to David bedggood:

I am trying to avoid that quirky Trot language that is a hangover from the
past, rather I am trying to take what is valid from those traditional
concepts and theories and apply it in a modern context.  Yelling about
"petty bourgeois rubbish", ranting and villifying and suchlike do not fit
in my preferred mode of discourse.

David asks:

The question is who do we blame for the  collapse of the fightback after
the end of the boom?

Do you need somebody to blame, do you need to be able to identify and
villify some "traitors" ? Very roughly, Stalinism mostly killed off the
development of Marxist thought, and social democratic and centrist type
formations have not been able to generate viable political alternatives
which address the changed way in with the modern capitalist system
functions, to modern capitalist culture and therefore socialist ideology
mostly caves in.  Socialist ideology that persists today is mostly a
hangeover of the past, good for warm fuzzies but not much else.
> 

David writes:

> My point to you, and to James who echoes some of your thoughts on 
> defeats in the recent past, is that these defeats are relative to the
struggle 
> put up. James' idea that people [presumably we are talking about 
> workers here] were self confident individuals until the new right
clobbered
> them into passivity is very superficial. They were never self-anything in

> the first place  but smashed subjects taken in tow by the labour
bureaucracy 
> [SD and stalinist versions] and occasionally on a tiny scale by the
centrist left. 

Comment:
> 
I don't think James echoes my thoughts at all and I don't think you should
say things like that.  I think you are caricaturing James's position, and
being overly "polemical".  Apparently you believe that you are being a
"revolutionary" by adopting a polemical style and throwing around
caricatures and terminology, but this is just nonsense.  
	I think that James is saying mainly that if you want to build a Marxist
political force really capable of withstanding the opposition, than you
need an outlook, and attitude and a theory which sees people as being
capable of making changes in thw world with confidence.  But in fact much
of the socialist and Trotskyist ideology that lingers on these days is a
bunch of diabolical nonsense which actually renders people INCOMPETENT to
change the world.  
And so we have to take a good hard look at where we are at culturally as
human subjects, because ranting on about Trotsky is by now passe.


David writes:

> This false consciousness of SD "social citizenship" was build on a
mudslide.  
> The responsibility for these defeats were the left's failed programme 
> [ its inability to understand theboom and its end] and/or its strategy
and tactics [the terrible twins of sectarianism and opportunism] and  not
that of
> working class militants pushed around a few pickets and occupations.
> Of course the consequences of these defeats were a worsening of 
> workers living conditions, but this is far from the "end of class
politics" 
> that  James and his co-thinkers argue. I suspect the Usec position is 
> not very different.

Comment:

I think that David is running together very quickly a lot of different
issues and the argument becomes waffle.  Nobody is talking about "an end to
class politics", that is just Bedggood's typical petty-bourgeois sectarian
venom for people who are politically much more successful than he is.
Nobody is trying amalgamate positions of the United Secretariat of the
Fourth International with those of James Heartfield, it is just David
Bedggood who in his tantrum wants to run them together.  We are talking a
politics which (1) has  moved way beyond a schema which some Trotskyist
academic dreamt up in a rush of revolutionary fervour, trying to dictate it
to a working class ("it") which exists chiefly only hin his imagination;
and which (2) actually starts to take a good look at relating to people in
the modern world, getting on with people, developing real and practical
alternatives to the "ruling ideas". 

David writes:

> Although the language of politics reflects the rights triumphalism,
> and centrism and Blairite SD have moved well to the right, 
> who can deny that the mounting crises in the former Eastern Bloc, 
> East Asia and the semi-colonies, plus the problems of Europe in 
> discipling its labour force, do not signifiy an intensification of 
> class struggle internationally and pose a daily test of the new world 
> disorder?

Comment:
> 
I don't know if I am suppose to answer this.  It is just rhetoric.


David writes:

> In the face of this instability, the "end of class politics" argument is 
> a very superficial mid-Atlantic reaction to neo-liberalism, which echoes,
> or rather inverts the neo-liberal terms, and becomes an alibi for the
left to
> retreat for a period and lick its wounds. Quite a few of this disoriented
left get 
> on the Spoons lists and infect it with their pessimism. Godena on 
> Menshevik-International is an obvious example. We need to fight this 
> pessimism whenever it appears on these lists. 
> 

Comment:

We also need to fight people who cannot communicate in a decent, cordial
manner even if they do not see eye to eye on the topic.  Or else just
irnore them.


Dabvid writes:

> If the subjectively revolutionary Trotskyists [and others] don't 
> learn these lessons, dont see what went wrong and who was to blame,  
> then they will get defeated  again, and if they have any influence 
> again mislead workers in yet another round of struggles with even more 
> serious  consequences. Because of new  upsurges in struggles, say in 
> Russia and China, more serious defeats could follow without 
> revolutionary leadership. Imperialism will be able to mobilise its
workers
> on the basis of labourism and chauvinism to embark on trade wars and
military wars against workers struggles in the former SU and East Asia, as 
those economies suffer  worsening  economic upheavals.

Comment:

I haven't got a clue about what a "subjectively revolutionary Trotskyist"
is, all I know is that I am not one of those, and there are few
"Trotskyists" that I want to have anything to do with ever again.  For the
rest I regard Dave"s remarks as general ranting and rhetoric in his typical
style, trotting out the by now well worn trot phrases about "crisis of
leadership" which reveals that he has learnt nothing from his experience
and hasn't done any of his own thinking.
 
Dave writes:

> Therefore, as the Trotskyists keep saying on these lists, the ones we 
> havent been excluded from, and some of us try to  practice as well as 
> preach, we have to solve the crisis of leadership. Each of us in our
various 
> Trotskyist tendencies has to do a ruthless balance sheet of our roles
over this period. What was wrong with our method, theory, programme,
strategy and tactics.   Now that would be a serious discussion far removed
from acidic comments. That would be a new Agenda. Between Hugh, Bob,
Jurriaan, James, me  and several others who contribute less frequently we
have quite a few  tendencies represented already. 
> 
I'll be damned if I have some Trotskyist academic from New Zealand trying
to be my boss and tell me what to do.  Dave just needs somebody to talk to
because apart from the people who do his courses he has nobody to talk to
about his pet theories for world revolution.  But I am not playing that
game. 

Dave writes:

> In terms of Jurriaan's comments about NZ. The nature of these defeats
were
> even  clearer. It was no accident that in the early '90's, Roger Douglas
and 
> Mike Moore flew off to the SU and EE to advise the new bourgeois regimes 
> on how to take apart "state socialism". What became known [incorrectly] 
> as the "New Zealand Experiment" was hailed as the "way, the truth and 
> the light" by international capitalists everywhere. After all NZ to
> their minds was a tiny socialist state where the shock therapy needed 
> in the Eastern bloc could be trialled with no real risk. 
> This was very clear in the case of  labour market reform with the 
> passing of the ECA in 1991 and which is now being 
> copied  in Russia.  After all the NZ union movement was 
> virtually a branch  of the state machine with bosses deducting dues and 
> enforcing closed shops on behalf of the unions! Its now happening 
> with reforms to social welfare were the US anti-welfare models are 
> being applied to a strongly entrenched welfare state. Resistance to 
> the axing of the welfare sacred cows is likely to be much more strong,
> yet it won't succeed  without revolutionary leadership.
> My point is that whether it was defence of  jobs, union rights or welfare
rights, these were  incredibly weak positions easily overrun when the
labour 
> lieutenants openly deserted to their generals, leaving  barely any time
for 
> the rank and file to find out how to regroup. The post-war boom, 
> protectionism, full employment, social welfare etc obviously 
> contributed to the false consciousness of "social citizenship", but 
> it was the labourite, Stalinist, and tiny Trotskyist left, which more 
> or less failed to understand what it was up against and made the
>  strong possiblity of defeat certain and much more damaging. 
> 
Comment:

Yeah, yeah, yeah.  So what's new.  This is all symptomatic of the kind of
defective leftist outlook and the sort of quirky language that I am
criticising. 

Dave writes:

>  Regroupment will only be possible when a new vanguard 
> leadership is able to apply a transitional programme to break the 
> best workers from labourite and nationalist politics represented by 
> the Alliance and the TUF. But this begs the question of who is going 
> to build that vanguard and on what foundation.
> 
Comment:

My point and I believe James's point is that you won't build anything on
the basis of hollow Trotskyist rhetoric and cant. You can wave your holy
texts such as the Transitional Programme around all you like but it will
only attract a bunch of nutters lacking any healthy conception of politics
in the real world.

This type of discussion is the same boring old shit that I had to put up
with in the 1980s and this is the last time I engaged in it.

The best thing David Bedggood can do as far as I can see is to write good
Marxist books based on sound research about New Zealand.  As soon as he
strays from that activity he goes wrong. 

Jurriaan. 



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