Wood vs. Lenin and Marx (was: Re: [R-G] World Socialist Website article

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

>1. I don't believe that people in the "periphery" can advance their 
>interests (short or long term) by uniting with ruling classes as 
>reactionary as the Islamist fascists are, whether in Iran or in 
>Afghanistan or in Saudi Arabia - and I really don't care whether Cde 
>Lenin entertained the mullahs of central Asia or not.
>2. It is not the task of communists to organise bourgeois states or 
>to strengthen them - there is nothing marxist about doing so - once 
>again I say this notwithstanding Cde Lenin - the question of 
>stateless people that you raise is precisely their oppression BY 
>PARTICULAR STATES (Turkey, Iraq, Israel, etc.). It is precisely 
>these states that are the problem, not the lack of states.
>3. I advocated support and solidarity with the people of Afghanistan 
>- this can be show in other ways than by supporting their ruling 
>classes. (If you have to snip, please at least remember this bit).
>4. It is the right of people everywhere to struggle against 
>oppressive regimes. Your posts and that of your friend suggest that 
>strengthening the position of the Taliban will make the Afghan state 
>more resistant to imperialism and therefore somewhat progressive. 
>Bullshit. Religious fascism is no antidote to imperialism and it 
>never will be.
>5. All of these obscurantist regimes show their true bourgeois 
>colours once they have been in existence for a while. That is 
>because their is NO PROGRESSIVE CONTENT in their movements. The 
>Saudi example is the prototype, starting as the militant Wahhabi 
>movement, now the enthusiastic pillar of Western capitalism. Anyone 
>with brains can see that Iran is gradually headed in the same 
>direction. A ME ruled over by OBL and associates is not far from 
>worst case scenario.
>6. If your only aim in opposing imperialist war in Afghanistan is to 
>prop up the present regime (I cannot believe though that this is 
>true, even of Leninists) then I am opposed to you and what you stand 
>for.

Into what _concrete & practical actions_ do you think leftists (where 
any exist in a sizable & organized social force) in the Middle East 
can translate the abstract ideas you expressed above?  "Proletarian 
risings in the Muslim world against capitalism, fundamentalism, 
terrorism and the US attacks" are, well, rather vague.  You mean 
taking up arms against bin Laden & Al-Qaida, the Northern Alliance, 
the Taliban, the U.S. armed forces, & the armed forces of the regimes 
allied with the U.S. regime at the same time?

Yoshie