To: marxism-AT-jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU
From: Zeynep Tufekcioglu <zeynept-AT-turk.net>
Subject: Re: marxism-digest V2 #958
Date: Sat, 27 Apr 1996 11:11:20 +0300


Boddhisatva wrote; hypothetically-

        Let's say the people's war (of some sort) is successful.  Peru
>tries to industrialize.  The capitalist nations embargo, the currency is
>made worthless externally and the people's factories cannot produce for
>export.  The government of Peru then pegs the currency to the US dollar,
>accepts US currency, and legalizes the production of concentrated coca
>(implicitly for export), under controlled conditions.  Clearly the U.S. goes
>nuts, but could the western capitalists resist the temptation of the legal
>flow of all that drug money, as the coca cartels send their dollars in to
>buy goods legally?

(snip)
>        I am absolutely not implying anything about the PCP, but I'm sure
>they will have something to say on this.  Does our new Turkish subscriber
>have anything to put in?

I won't argue the case, because the method of thinking is wrong. You are
assuming a Peruvian Revolution, while the rest of the world stays just as
is. This method works for chemistry experiments or debugging computer
programs, when one varies one variable at a time, keeping everything else
constant.

A more likely case would be; there is a revolution in Peru, which
undoubtedly influences neighboring countries' working class and peasants,
helps liven the revolutionaries world-wide. The revolution is partly
possible, because it could not be crushed militarily by the imperialist
powers, beset by their own economical/ political problems (think Vietnam).
The Peruvians fight back, as people who believe they are right always do,
better than any professional army, better than any million dollar military
machine. (If there is unrest in Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Bulgaria, Greece would
immediately be affected, there are Turks living in those countries, Kurds in
Turkey, Iran, Iraq, linked by language, kinship, very often economically as
well). Revolutionaries all over the world would be affected (shipments of
arms to be used against the 1917 Russian Revolution were effectively dumped
to the sea by the workers in many cases).

Do we deal in drugs? I hope not. Why must we? Who would fight and die to
replace the current state of the affairs with the same, differing in name?

You think of the US as a singular power, in terms of the US government only.
What about the US working class, or the German, Mexican, Turkish, Kurdish
working class. Governments are not entitites floating on air, perpetual in
their status quo. Bourgeois historians makes statements as such, "then the
US did this, then Germany did that". 

I think Lenin's oft repeated arguments about the "weakest chain of the link"
should enter the here. I won't repeat, but the world is not simply an
interaction of governments, opaque to each other's internal class structure. 

Say the US embargoes, but the customs offials and shippers don't. 

One local note, there is no effective embargo of Iraq from Turkey, goods are
regularly smuggled and exchanged on both sides of the border, petroleum from
Iraq, food and other stuff from Turkey move in large quantities. Kurds North
of the border organise sometimes under the organisations as the Kurds South
of the Border. How do you think Iraq has been managing in spite of all these
years of "embargo". Do you think the Lebanese enforce the embargo against Iraq?

I'll accept that any revolution may be defeated by the imperialists, at any
case. Internationalism may not take roots enough and the revolution may be
isolated. But even at worst, it won't be as straight forward as you make it
sound like.

Sorry, but your analysis sounds like the Financial Times.

Regards,
Zeynep 



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