Date: Mon, 11 May 1998 22:21:38 +0100
From: Hugh Rodwell <m-14970-AT-mailbox.swipnet.se>
Subject: M-TH: Re: Waterman vs history


Peter Waterman writes:

>Rather than continuing to block out useful information and new ideas
>with what might be called `red-out' (boring the pants off real human
>beings with a spectral dance of lifeless categories - and taking the
>piss out of such), I now declare my retirement. The score is,
>therefore,  History (According to Hugh) 1: Waterman 0.

This assumes that discussing political aspects of struggles like the
wharfies is boring, especially if it's "red", which is presumably code for
Marxist or revolutionary.

More interesting is the reference to "lifeless categories", which Waterman
leaves as an abstract and empty polemical barb. I can only assume he means
such things as the expropriation of the bourgeoisie in Russia through the
October revolution, the terms in which Lenin and Trotsky discussed the
relation of class interests to the development of this revolution (before
and after), and Marx and Engels' reference to the struggle of the
proletariat with the bourgeoisie being international in substance but
national in form. Or could it just be an allergy to categories like
'proletariat' and 'working class' or 'bourgeoisie' and 'capitalism'? We'll
never know what Waterman makes a show of knowing so well, because he
refuses to tell us.

Obviously he doesn't regard 'globalization' or workers' struggle as such as
lifeless categories, and history in itself seems to be OK, because he
refers to 150 years of lack of proof -- although he fails to tell us in
plain language what hasn't been proved, so he uses history to demonstrate
something, but doesn't let us know what it is. So what is lifeless?
"Revolution"? "World revolution"? "Socialism"?

This is discussion by nods and winks. In-crowd stuff. We all know this and
we all know that. Blanket and dismissive condemnation of a critical voice,
and then a refusal to clarify or engage on *any* of the issues raised when
challenged.

>Anyone wishing to take the piss out of me can find some of my
>actually-existing arguments on my so-far experimental website, Global
>Solidarity. Feel free.

Why the diminution of debate to "taking the piss"? Normal, open debate
would be fine. Let him tell us either what he objects to most (in terms of
issues and positions) in the posts he's so roundly condemned, or highlight
the most central features of his programme for New Social Unionism and
demonstrate its modernity and its superiority to alternatives.


>`Communication is the nervous system of internationalism
>and solidarity' (Jose Carlos Mariategui, Lima, c.1923)

I'd like to know how this ties in with class interests and class
organizations and the way they are led -- in struggles like the wharfies,
for instance.

And if communication is the nervous system, what about the rest of the body
-- the brain, the muscles and the limbs?

Cheers,

Hugh





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