[A-List] James Petras on Beslan - fire away

[Waistline2 at aol.com]

>>>I am not a Marxist, but on this issue I agree with you profoundly. 

The attack on the Russian children and their parents in Beslan touched me 
deeply, partly because of my own personal history. 

This was an attack on Russia, certainly. But it was more than that. It was an 
attack on civilisation. It was an attack on what it means to be human.<<<

Comment

I do not personally believe that a reasonable assessment of the event that is 
Beslan or the bombing of the Twin Towers in New York has very much to do with 
one being a Marxists. Hours after the Twin Towers bombing . . . writing on 
Marxmail . . . I labeled it an act of bourgeois terrorism. Bin Laden is a 
bourgeois terrorists for instance . . . although he no doubt has a wellspring of 
support amongst variouys sections of the world peoples. 

Part of the mistake the leftists radical make . . . in my opinion . . . is to 
assume that the terror that is Beslan is "organically" connected to what they 
claim is the Chechan Freedom Movement or Chechan Liberation Movement. 
Comparing Beslan with the struggle of the Palestinian with/against the Israeli State 
is mind boggling. 

I am not even asking for an opinion poll of the people who are Chechan . . . 
or rather the various peoples that occupy the territory refereed to as 
Chechnya . . . but rather looking as some specific economic and class factors 
riveting North Ossetia to the economic center that is Russia. 

I agree with the Petras article because that is my understanding of the 
political and economic factors underlying the breach head of violence . . . that 
emerged with the break up of the Soviet State . . . and an aspect of this 
organized violence is part of the old Soviet military and intelligence apparatus as 
opposed to an abstract Soviet bureaucracy. 

The issue is not Putin or even the Russian State as such but rather the 
consolidation of a bourgeois apparatus through out the former Soviet Union. No 
matter what forces come to the front in South and North Ossetia . . . all of them 
want closer economic relations with Russia. 

The tendency of the leftists . . . Marxists if you will . . .  to quote Lenin 
from 90 years ago to explain modern economic and political logic and motion 
is simply being lazy and a refusal to unravel what is in front of us. What is 
called the national question . . . a peasant question that emerged on the basis 
of the transition from feudalism to capitalism . . . or what I call the 
transition from agricultural society and landed property relations to industrial 
society . . . does not even exists as such and vanished from the political and 
economic landscape decades ago. 

This is really a very old argument with one writing describing Beslan as the 
result of Lenin's failure to remove Stalin almost 90 years ago. Very childish 
logic. 

Within all this madness communists have to make a principle fight along one 
strategic line . . . to the best of our ability. Today the world proletariat 
faces the world bourgeoisie and the form of struggle on a planetary basis is 
being slowly reshaped to reflect this fact. For instance I do not call the 
resistance and fight of the Iranian masses a struggle "for self determination."  
This is an evolving struggle against foreign and domestic capital. 

Now the Russian State in the person of Putin is going to respond as a 
representative of bourgeois property. The event that is Beslan is not a manifestation 
of the fight for self determination by the Chechan masses . . . but political 
terrorism on the part of War Lords and the most reactionary bourgeois 
nationalists.

Melvin P.