[Marxism] In Defense of Harrington and American

[Louis Proyect]

Bhaskar Sunkara wrote:
  > What do you think of the example of the Christian Right's movement 
into the
> Republican Party?  Would their nefarious cause been better suited in the
> Constitution Party?  Is this example at all relevant for progressive and
> socialist forces?  These aren't rhetorical statements, but actual questions.

Bhaskar, I think you over-emphasize the ideological aspects of politics 
as if categories such as liberal and conservative take priority over 
bourgeoisie and proletarian, the more important criteria for Marxists. I 
would say that in the U.S. you have a single bourgeois political party 
with 2 open factions. In the 19th century the party structures mapped to 
class composition much more than they do today. I think that the 2-party 
system is set up to thwart challenges to the capitalist system, although 
this was not consciously set up that way--it just evolved.

> As far as anti-imperialism and "the Harrington's of the world" not being
> allowed to quote Marx--- I myself follow Lenin's traditional of
> anti-imperialism and Leninism's tradition of third world struggles.  Marx
> himself was said to not mind and to SUPPORT the USA's imperialist aggression
> in Mexico in the 1840s, because it would only led to the building up of
> productive forces and hasten the end of the bourgeois era.  Marx himself and
> Engles when he supported imperialist efforts in North Africa, showed that
> they were prone to lapses as well.

Marx and Engels did not live in a time when imperialism had fully 
evolved. You are much better off taking somebody like Rosa Luxemburg or 
  E. Belfort Bax as representative of Marxist thinking on Empire. Here's 
Bax in an 1886 article on Morocco:

We call the attention of our readers to the fact which some of them may 
have overlooked that Morocco is at the present time the elect morsel of 
the capitalist harpies of Europe. All the “powers” are simultaneously 
negotiating treaties of commerce with the Moorish potentate, and it is 
rumoured that Germany has been pressing for permission for a syndicate 
of her capitalists to “open up” the country in approved fashion, though, 
it is, said, as yet without success.

The most, ominous sign of all however, is the appearance in the field of 
the capitalist’s right hand man; the professional “philanthropist”. For 
a long time past the press has presented us with periodical fragments of 
intelligence from Tangiers all tending to impress the virtuous British 
public with the terrible wickedness of the Moorish authorities; and 
above all inculcate a due sense of horror at the domestic slavery which 
exists there as in all Oriental civilisations.

full: http://www.marxists.org/archive/bax/1886/01/morocco.htm