[Marxism] Some questions for the ideological leaders of theMarxmail club

[Joaquin Bustelo]

Ozleft (Bob Gould) writes: "How does this development in Australia square
with the core tenets of your rapidly developing alternative ideology to
Marxism? Insofar as I understand it, you've developed the view that the
working class in advanced capitalist countries either never existed, or at
least never existed as a class for itself, even momentarily, and as a result
of your new ideological construction, the modern trade union movement is at
best irrelevant, but more usually in your writings, a major vehicle for
imperialism."

Your "understanding" of what I think is, I guess, predictable, but in no
wise accurate. I don't have a dogma about all imperialist countries, now and
forever, in general. I've made the observation that there is no
class-for-itself movement in the U.S. now nor has there been for decades,
and that my *impression* is that the *tendency* in the other major
imperialist countries has been similar. This is a phenomenon similar to that
analyzed by Marx and Engels in relation to England in the second half of the
1800's and by Lenin after the outbreak of WWI especially in his article,
"Imperialism and the split in socialism," and by the second Comintern
Congress, especially in the theses submitted by MB Rot.

As to my writing that unions are "a major vehicle for imperialism," all I
can say is I wish I had your imagination, Bob. Then I could make a living as
a novelist instead of as a hack in the bourgeois news racket.

I don't have any particular opinion about Howard's defeat. From what little
I know, your interpretation seems reasonable enough. But you could present a
very similar description of last year's congressional elections in the
United States, when working people, and especially Black and Latinos voted
for the Democrats and ended the Republican majorities in both houses of
Congress. Which, as I've mentioned here before, is more significant than it
may seem because U.S. House districts are so gerrymandered and only 1/3rd of
the Senate is up for election in any given year. And, yes, the unions played
a big role in getting out this Democrat vote. 

The way I interpret the event in the United States is that lots of working
people --millions of them-- realized and understood the need to act
politically to change the direction the country on Iraq and other issues,
and used what seemed to be the only readily and immediately available
vehicle to try to do that. Much to their chagrin, the got the result they
wanted elect orally but it failed to bring about the political objectives
--the change of policy especially in relation to Iraq. 

I don't view that election or its outcome as a sign that the working class
has begun to cohere socially and politically. Perhaps what happened will
lead to that eventually, but there are intervening steps and stages that
would need to be traversed first.

Ozleft writes: "I've noted, Joaquin, that you've made extensive comment on
developments in Britain, arguing from afar, it must be said, that some kind
of nationalist movement of people of colour should be developed in Britain."

Huh? I've not argued "that some kind of nationalist movement of people of
colour should be developed in Britain." What I've pointed out is evidence of
nationalist-type sentiment among immigrant and Muslim communities, and that
things like immigration, religious, language and ethnic discrimination,
etc., are all issues that are in the realm of the national question and need
to be treated as such.

When comrades start arguing about the dangers of "communalist" politics
among specially oppressed peoples, whether the basis of that oppression be
skin color ("race") or nationality/ethnicity or immigration status or
religion --however vague at the edges or overlapping the definition of the
oppressed group(s) might be-- and start counterposing "class" politics to
"communalist" politics, I think there is usually a problem there. Because
nationalisms --even just on the level of sentiment, the even vague and not
fully expressed idea by its members that as a group, Muslims or immigrants
or Asians face common problems and should seek common solutions-- always
come in pairs. And the trashing of the nationalism of the oppressed can
become a service to or even an expression of the other nationalism in the
pair.

And that is the nationalism of the oppressor, which is quite often
overlooked, but it is precisely THAT which evokes the nationalism of the
oppressed. My contention is that my POLITICAL position on this is a
hyper-orthodox, ultra-Marxist and Leninist position, specifically, that in
the epoch of imperialism, as a general rule, oppressed peoples are most
internationalist precisely when they are nationalist, because THAT
nationalism is directed against imperialism. 

I ABSOLUTELY do not advocate that groups like the British SWP, the ISO here,
the LCR in France, or the DSP in Australia adopt a line "that some kind of
nationalist movement of people of colour should be developed" in Britain,
the U.S., Australia, France or wherever. I do NOT believe groups composed
mostly of dominant-nation radicals, recruited largely from the
intelligentsia on the basis of broad social and political concerns, and
especially if they have toy Bolshevik "discipline" and paper "correct
program" fetish, can "develop" national movements among oppressed peoples.
Not even if they weren't organized as cults. A movement of some oppressed
group might or might not arise; but if it does, it will arise from within
the oppressed.

What I do suggest is that it would be useful for groups like the UK SWP,
etc., to NOT GET IN THE WAY of such a development, but on the contrary, to
be supportive, and above all to UNDERSTAND. Thus you had the case of the
dispute between the SWP & allies on one side, and Galloway & allies on the
other, about some candidacy recently. From the various accounts, the person
favored by Galloway & Co. had higher standing in their Muslim community, was
viewed as more of a community person, than the more radical and younger
person favored by the SWP. And totally absent from the SWP's analysis and
calculations around this was that RESPECT had become a political expression
of these oppressed communities in a couple of areas. Their line as I see it
was, in essence, to split the emerging community movement along class lines,
not recognizing the legitimacy --the historical and material basis-- of
ethnic/community movements. 

The ISO --in their writings and analysis-- had a similar blindness to the
reality that the big immigrant rights upsurge here a year and a half ago was
a movement of the Latino community, although I found that in practice they
tended to be fairly sensitive to and respectful of that reality even though
it did not find much expression in their more formal analysis or
descriptions of the movement. 

Ozleft writes: "I don't quite understand how you're so confident about your
constructions about Britain, but by implication it seems to me that you may
favour some kind of Third World nationalist movement of this sort in
Australia.

"I might say, in relation to this, that there's no evidence at all in
Australia of any objective basis for such a metaphysical schema. People of
migrant background, migrants of colour, and Aboriginal people, now make up
almost half of the Australian population, and they're rapidly becoming
politicised, partly in defensive response to the racism of the
conservatives, and of some people in the more conservative sections of the
labour movement."

I'm not sure, but I *think* I'm being accused of being in favor of oppressed
people organizing as such against their oppressors. If that's the case, I'll
say that, while I'm not in the business of trying to make medicine for
Australia, I would CERTAINLY be in solidarity with such a movement. 

But I view the emergence of such movements of the oppressed as an objective
reality. What I am for is trying to understand their political significance
and on that basis stand in solidarity with and offer support to such
movements, not try to conjure them up should they not exist. 

For example, all the pre-WWI anti-Bundist Bolshevik-Kautskyite theorizing
about why Jews weren't a nation in Russia weren't of much help when the
RCP(B) found themselves in power and needed to mobilize every last scrap of
possible support from anyone and everyone to maintain the Soviet Power. Out
the window went the theory, and Jews got recognition of their rights as a
people. 

There is a lesson in that.

You say that "People of migrant background, migrants of colour, and
Aboriginal people, now make up almost half of the Australian population, and
they're rapidly becoming politicised, partly in defensive response to the
racism of the conservatives, and of some people in the more conservative
sections of the labour movement."

I beg to differ. I don't believe they're just reacting to the "racism of the
conservatives" and "some people" in the labor movement. I think they're
reacting to the reality that Australia is a CLASSIC colonial-settler state;
and at the cornerstone of that state is white anglophone supremacy, which is
not a matter of prejudices by individuals or social layers but of a SYSTEM
of domination.

It is in the nature of such systems that it is often invisible to people
from the dominant/oppressor nationality. 

Thus whereas you view movement(s) of oppressed peoples as such within such a
state as "a metaphysical schema" I view their emergence as a well-nigh
inevitable result of what Australia IS, although I have no idea what
specific forms this might take. 

You say "there's no evidence at all in Australia of any objective basis for
such a metaphysical schema," as community/ethnic (national) movements of
oppressed peoples. I would say the denial itself is more than sufficient
proof that there is, in fact, an objective basis for such movements.

The fact that you can speak of these groups as such AT ALL shows they have
ALREADY been constructed by the supremacist system as the other. The other
HAS to be there so you can even conceive of the dominant white anglophone
layer. It is their existence as the other, that is the fundamental objective
basis for their cohering into a social movement or movements. Their
exclusion.

This is perhaps my most notorious apostasy from "Marxism" (by which, IMHO,
most people mean what I consider to be a class-reductionist dogma). My
position is that capitalism is today, and has always been, about MORE than
class exploitation, it is also fundamentally a system based on oppression
and exploitation along national (including race, ethnic, color, religion,
and immigrant status) and gender lines.

I've heard lots of rending of clothes and cries of he hath blasphemed, about
this. My friend Fred said he could write a whole book about his
disagreements with me. 

But I've yet to see anyone try to defend the idea that Marx and Engels were
fundamentally right in the quite vigorous argument they present in the
Manifesto that capitalism is, in fact, in real life, on the ground, class
reductionist; that it is gradually reducing all previous forms of
exploitation and oppression to class, and if not class only AT LEAST class
overwhelmingly. Paula is the ONLY one that adheres to Marx and Engels's
views on this --I'm not sure how consciously-- with her argument that
capitalist development automatically transforms the country where it takes
place into an imperialist country. But everyone else denies this.

Comrades base their politics and analysis AS IF this were true, but I've yet
to see anyone else try to demonstrate that the tendencies Marx and Engels
described as being there are IN FACT there, are demonstrable, provable real
tendencies. 

And on the national question, comrades like those of the SWP do not base
their own politics on Marx and Engels's political approach towards struggles
against national oppression in those cases they were closest to and active
around, specifically Poland and Ireland. Because Marx and Engels did not
argue that it was the internationalist duty of these oppressed peoples to
subordinate and liquidate their national struggle into the class struggle,
on the contrary, they argued that it was the revolutionary internationalist
duty of the Irish and Poles to wage their *national* struggles with utmost
vigor, and the duty of revolutionaries from oppressor nations to support
them, and the right of the oppressed to organize by themselves, and to
prioritize their own struggles for national liberation, and that anything
else was "prattling submission."

Thus I believe a lot of the comrades are loyal neither to the Marxist METHOD
of historical and materialist analysis nor to the political approach of Marx
and Engels (and ... eventually ... Lenin), but instead adhere to a dogma
placed at the service of narrow, economist and essentially un-Marxist
politics.

Ozleft writes, "Migrants from 162 countries now make up the largest
proportion of the organised working class in Australia (the very notion of
the organised working class may be anathema to you in view of your writing
in recent times). It must be said that the overwhelming majority of people
of colour, both migrant and Aboriginal, on the left side of Australian
society, find the vehicle for their current political expression in the
Labor Party and the trade unions."

On the composition of the Australian working class, my *impression* is that
this *tendency* is operating in all imperialist countries. In many of these
countries, the standard of living "socially necessary" to be what we in the
United States call "white" means that birth rates have fallen well below
what is necessary to maintain the existing numbers of those populations.
Raising two "white" children has become MORE expensive than the average
"white" (or corresponding category in other countries) family can afford.
The current standard of living is being maintained at the expense of future
generations, and not just in terms of their numbers, but also through the
unsustainable exploitation of natural resources and fouling of the
biosphere.

On the immigrant portion of the working class, I would urge Bob to re-read
or read for the first time the minutes of the Second Congress of the
Comintern session on that national and colonial question, and think about
WHY coming out of the reports by Lenin and the Lenin-sponsored supplementary
theses by Roy, the first two speakers on the point about the national and
colonial question were Reed, on the situation of Blacks in the U.S., and
Fraina, on the situation of immigrants in the United States. 

These interventions were almost certainly organized by the commission or
leaders of the congress; they were obviously thought-through in advance, and
have more the character of prepared presentations rather than contributions
to a discussion or debate. 

In neither case was there a major, visible national-type movement in these
populations, and in the case of immigrants, they found their expression
mostly in and through a REAL class movement.

I'm not sure the same can be said for Australia today. As to whether the
"overwhelming majority" of immigrants and people of color in Australia find
the vehicle for their political expression through the unions, either I'm
tremendously misinformed about the state of the labor movement or this is
blarney. As to the labor party, the same thing is true of the Democrats in
the United States, but I would argue that is not part of the solution, but
part of the problem, one of the ways in which white supremacy and domination
manifests.

Joaquín



-----Original Message-----
From: marxism-bounces at lists.econ.utah.edu
[mailto:marxism-bounces at lists.econ.utah.edu] On Behalf Of Ozleft
Sent: Sunday, December 02, 2007 10:03 PM
To: Marxism at lists.econ.utah.edu
Subject: [Marxism] Some questions for the ideological leaders of theMarxmail
club

Some serious questions to the ideological leaders of the Marxmail club in
the light of the sweeping defeat of the conservative government in Australia
and the election of a Labor government

By Bob Gould

By now you all may be aware, although you have not commented at any length
on, the defeat of Bush's surviving Iraq war ally, John Howard, the
conservative prime minister of Australia, and his xenophobic, racist,
anti-trade-union Liberal Party.

Surely this development is worthy of comment.

My first question is to the ideological pacemaker of Marxmail, Joaquin
Bustello.

How does this development in Australia square with the core tenets of your
rapidly developing alternative ideology to Marxism? Insofar as I understand
it, you've developed the view that the working class in advanced capitalist
countries either never existed, or at least never existed as a class for
itself, even momentarily, and as a result of your new ideological
construction, the modern trade union movement is at best irrelevant, but
more usually in your writings, a major vehicle for imperialism.

The Australian developments seem to refute that general approach. It's
universally accepted in Australia that the legislative attacks of the Howard
government on the right of trade unions to organise and on the right of
workers to collectively bargain was the main factor in the defeat of the
government.

The subjective factor in this defeat was a major mobilisation initiated by
the trade unions, even in their relatively weakened state, of tens of
thousands of workers in demonstrations and electoral campaigning in marginal
seats, culminating on election day in a mobilisation of about 100,000 on
polling booths, of whom about half were workers by hand and brain, many
thousands of them trade unionists.

It's also worth noting in this context that a large and vital section of the
mobilisation through the vehicle of the trade unions and the Labor Party
were migrants of non-English-speaking background or their children, and
Aboriginal Australians.

Due largely to compulsory voting, perhaps 95 per cent of Aboriginal people
voted, and they voted 90 per cent for the Labor Party. The Aboriginal vote,
in particular, was mobilised by sections of the labour movement opposed to
the bad aspects of the Howard government's military style intervention in
Northern Territory Aboriginal communities.

I've noted, Joaquin, that you've made extensive comment on developments in
Britain, arguing from afar, it must be said, that some kind of nationalist
movement of people of colour should be developed in Britain. 
I don't quite understand how you're so confident about your constructions
about Britain, but by implication it seems to me that you may favour some
kind of Third World nationalist movement of this sort in Australia.

I might say, in relation to this, that there's no evidence at all in
Australia of any objective basis for such a metaphysical schema. People of
migrant background, migrants of colour, and Aboriginal people, now make up
almost half of the Australian population, and they're rapidly becoming
politicised, partly in defensive response to the racism of the
conservatives, and of some people in the more conservative sections of the
labour movement.

Migrants from 162 countries now make up the largest proportion of the
organised working class in Australia (the very notion of the organised
working class may be anathema to you in view of your writing in recent
times). It must be said that the overwhelming majority of people of colour,
both migrant and Aboriginal, on the left side of Australian society, find
the vehicle for their current political expression in the Labor Party and
the trade unions.

How does any of this square with your rapidly developing thesis, shared in a
way by conservative ideologues, that the working class is no longer the
significant force it once was?

A question for Louis Proyect.

As you know from lengthy things I've written over the past few years, I
share your interest in what you originally termed Zinovievism, and have
views about that question at an historical level. My understanding is that
Zinovievism, or the over-centralisation of Marxist and socialist groups,
flowed from the Stalinist degeneration in the Soviet Union that set in after
the death of Lenin.

My view on those questions is that the aim, through stubborn attempts at
discussion, conflict and collaboration, with relatively young members of a
number of the existing Marxist groups, the aim should be the development of
a better model of socialist organisation without the ultra-centralisation
expressed in the Stalinist degeneration that gave rise to Zinovievism.

As an exasperated watcher of discussion on Marxmail, I'm fascinated that
adult socialists on your associated SWP list should spend so much time, at
least literary time, on vindictive, stupid and apolitical incantations and
gossip about the US SWP and other socialist groups.

I'm no pacifist in polemical matters, as many people know, but I see little
point in constant trivial and poorly developed railing against one's
perceived enemies. The contributions in Australia of Ratbag Radio Riley, and
on the SWP list particularly of Phillip Ferguson the academic from New
Zealand, seem to me to fall over the edge from rational polemic into what
Belloc, or was it Chesterton, called the higher lunacy.

For what it's worth, I regard the members, and even the leaders, of the
various Marxist groups in the Trotskyist tradition as, up to a point, my
comrades. The point of arguing with them or commenting on them is to try to
crack open their often severely developed hard shells with the aim of
prompting discussion about what to do next.

Based on my 55 years of political activity, I can only conclude that the
tone, style and content of the SWP list is barking mad, from a Marxist point
of view. Trying to sift through the entrails of the Barnes outfit to find
auguries about its degeneration resembles, to me, the preoccupation of
medieval theologians with how many angels could cavort on the head of a pin,
and it's about as useful.

Concerning the problems of discussion among socialist groups in Australia, I
draw your attention, Louis, to the question of the Greens. 
This recent election has defined the shape of political development in
Australia for quite a while to come. The Labor vote has revived
dramatically, particularly in poorer areas with lower incomes, and
particularly among NESB migrants, as bourgeois journalists such as George
Megalogenis are now noting. He has just produced an analysis pointing out
that Labor won 30 of the 31 electorates with the highest concentration of
non-English-speaking-background migrants. Of those seats, the ones with the
most exploited sections of the working class were won by Labor with about 70
per cent of the vote.

Everything about this election reinforces the reality, in Australia at
least, that election results are mostly a matter of class, which is
something that can be absorbed cursorily by looking at a map of electoral
outcomes in all the major Australian cities. There's a big core difference
in Australia between the primary electoral votes of Labor and the Liberals
and class divisions are clearly the major part of this.

The Greens in Australia are a broadly leftist political formation with their
primary vote in the new social layers of tertiary educated and technically
trained workers, and to some extent among youth. Their vote is rather more
Anglo and European than the Labor vote.

The Green vote increased in this election and now nudges 10 per cent
nationally. That's a figure around which, in my opinion, it will remain
stable for the foreseeable future. The Greens are now a small mass party,
with probably after this election, 10,000 to 15,000 members nationally.

In this election, despite conflict on some questions, a comprehensive
preference agreement was achieved by Labor and the Greens, and it held up.
Without Greens preferences it would have been very hard for Labor to win the
election.

In my view we face a time in which a broad labour movement, consisting
mainly at the political level of Labor and the Greens, is the obvious arena
for agitation and intervention by organised socialists. Some socialist
groups have recognised that in a rational way, and three of them –
Solidarity, the ISO and a smaller group in Brisbane – made a tactical turn
towards the Greens.

They learned a lot during the election campaign, got themselves a bit of an
audience on the left, and incidentally seem highly likely to form a united
organisation between the three of them in the fairly near future.

It's also worth observing that those three groups have evolved a style of
conducting tactical discussion pretty publicly, and they seem to be in the
process of ditching the exaggerated Zinovievism that both Proyect and Gould
have commented on over the past few years. They haven't relinquished, and
nor should they, the general aim of socialist activity and intervention.

By way of contrast, the two slightly bigger propaganda groups, the DSP
majority and Socialist Alternative, have retreated into their Zinovievist
shells, like turtles, so to speak.

The worst example of the turtle sickness is the DSP majority, whose
pretensions to be the organising centre of some kind of alliance as a major
influence in the workers movement have been punctured by the election
results. They are flailing around accusing assorted opponents of betrayal.
The people they mainly accuse are the different socialist groups that don't
accept the DSP's strategic pretensions.

The DSP majority has turned up the pressure on the DSP minority in defence
of the majority's bankrupt perspective. Given the way these things tend to
go, it seems likely that the logic of the majority's pretensions will be
eventually to force the minority out.

I don't favour further splits, given the relatively weak state of the
socialist movement, but such a division may occur. A straw in the wind is
that in the internal material of the DSP, I'm told on good authority, the
leadership is lashing out at assorted members of the Socialist Alliance in a
verbal way for not working hard enough on the exotic, totally voluntarist
and quite unsuccessful Socialist Alliance election campaign. Particular
targets of this treatment are some Socialist Alliance members who've
recently departed from the DSP .

Finding scapegoats for objective defeats is a very old practice in small
Marxist groups. The Healy organisations, when I was familiar with them, were
past masters at that kind of thing, and nothing good ever came of it. The
bankrupt perspectives usually become even more disastrous as the leaders
attempt to defend them, in my observation,.

The increasing crisis of perspective facing the DSP majority is demonstrated
pretty clearly by the semi-coherent ravings of Ratbag Radio Riley and the
rather vindictive comments on Marxmail of the usually careful and
mild-mannered Nick Fredman. Underlying their comments and the election
analysis of Dick Nichols in Green Left Weekly are the obviously false
implication that the Socialist Alliance did pretty well in the election, and
the voluntarist and un-Marxist implication that if we really just worked a
little harder and those other pesky socialist groups stopped obstructing us,
the Alliance would blossom as the necessary, all-encompassing centre of the
fightback. Pigs might fly.

A rather ugly note emerges in Nick Fredman's comment on the ISO's support
for the Greens in the recent election. Fredman argues that any orientation
of such groups towards the Greens is unprincipled unless these groups adopt
the DSP's Third Period, united-front-from-below strategy, demanding that if
these groups consider joining the Greens they should demand public rights to
be a separate political formation as well. He's jumping the gun a bit,
because there's no evidence that these groups want to join the Greens. If
they did, the last thing they should even consider is adopting a DSP-style
clamorous demand to be a separate political outfit in the Greens. Many
people in the Greens have extremely bad memories of the DSP's operations in
and around the Greens years ago and their equally clamorous intervention in
the Nuclear Disarmament Party. The last thing any socialists in and around
the Greens should do is adopt DSP-style clamorous super-interventionist
styles of work.

The obvious question that everyone on the far left in Australia is asking in
their own different ways, often with their own organisational axes to grind,
is what do we do now in Australia.

I'd be very interested in the views of the ideological leaders of the
Marxmail club on that question. Joaquin, in particular, seems to have plenty
of ideas about Britain. For my part, I don't claim to have all the answers,
but a number of things seem quite obvious.

There are certainly battles to come, and agitations of all sorts are likely
to develop once the sheer delight of the left side of society at doing in
the conservatives has been savoured for a while.

The exposure politics of some of the socialist groups is clearly bankrupt,
and even counterproductive. In the sphere of the politicised mass movements
the obvious arenas of activity are still the trade unions, the Labor Party
and now the Greens small mass party, as well as the substantial social
movements that exist.

There's also a very pressing need in the short term for Marxist study and
historical and theoretical training in a bit of a forced march to raise the
political level of the new forces being brought into activity.

It seems to me that the relatively conservative character of the new Labor
government is not an absolute obstacle to a leftist mobilisation. 
The conditions, however, for such a mobilisation are a recognition of the
present state of play in the workers movement and society at large.

There's a mood of what I would characterise as defensive militancy in the
trade unions. There are some expectations in society at large about the need
for progressive actions by the incoming Labor government. For quite a while,
however, Rudd and his team will have the political authority on the left
side of society, which politicians get from an electoral victory,
particularly one that brings downed a Tory government that seemed often to
be impregnable.

We need a rapid discussion of a sensible leftist minimum program on all the
obvious questions of the day. The kind of program on which it might just be
possible to get broad agreement in the trade union movement, the progressive
social movements and the Labor Party and Green mass political organisations,
as well as the left side of society at large.

We should seize the day in a non-sectarian spirit, using careful language in
the mass movement, which takes into account the existing and long-term needs
of the labour movement, the Green mass movement, and all components of both.
In these conditions we should generalise our agitation on a broad range of
questions, eschewing like the plague Byzantine left talk attacking the
existing leaders of the various mass movements, and political organisations
on the left side of society.

I'm genuinely interested in comments on perspectives on these developments
in Australia from the ideological leaders of the Marxmail club.



________________________________________________
YOU MUST clip all extraneous text before replying to a message.
Send list submissions to: Marxism at lists.econ.utah.edu
Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism