The intellectual origins of America-Bashing

[Otto]

> >
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: "Paul Mackin" <paul.mackin at verizon.net>
> > To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> > Sent: Friday, October 24, 2003 4:45 PM
> > Subject: Re: The intellectual origins of America-Bashing
> >
> >
> > > On Fri, 2003-10-24 at 09:45, Otto wrote:
> > > > ----- Original Message -----
> > > > From: KXX4493553 at aol.com
> > > > To: Pynchon-L
> > > > Sent: Thursday, October 23, 2003 4:34 PM
> > > > Subject: FWD: The intellectual origins of America-Bashing
> > > > >
> > > > > The Intellectual Origins Of America-Bashing
> > > > > By Lee Harris
> > > > > http://www.policyreview.org/dec02/harris.html
> > > > > Quite interesting article. Harris is a neocon, but what he has to
say
> > > > about Karl Marx is astonishing...
> > > > >
> > > > > kwp
> > > > >
> > > >
> > > > Quite interesting indeed.
> > > >
> > > > What Harris doesn't realize is that before capitalism can turn into
> > > > socialism there has to be the inevitable phase of fascism:
> > >
> > >
> > > It sounds like socialism should be ridiculously easy to bring about.
> > >
> > >
> >
> > In a complex world nothing concerning the order of society is easy to be
> > brought about.
>
> Very true. I was being facetious. It just had struck me that your
> statement sounded very unMarxian--although "the worse the better" is not
> an unfamiliar idea to revolutionaries.
>
>
> >
> > It's the simple minded idea of neocons that just by smashing the
"terrorist
> > network" and leading wars abroad peace and order at home can be
guaranteed.
>
> This may be, but Harris's main contention in the article referred to was
> that the Baran-Wallerstein thesis, assuming it's true, isn't a promising
> basis for advancing the socialist revolution and toppling capitalism (as
> the increasing immiserization  of workers in advanced capitalist
> counties was once believed to be)
>
> There was a lot of other interesting stuff in the piece but it was
> secondary to the main point.
>
>
>
> P
>

If I sound unMarxian it is because I'm no marxist in the meaning of that
word. But looking around I see that many of what he has said is becoming
more and more true. What we're seeing now is that under the term
"globalization" workers in the advanced countries are impoverished along
with the Third World countries, although "poverty" of course has a different
meaning in Africa compared to Europe, the USA or Australia. But I think it's
obvious that *their* "poverty" isn't a guarantee for *our* wealth anymore.

"(...) the otherwise baffling valorization of 9-11 on the part of the left -
by which I mean the enormous world-historical significance that they have
been prepared to attribute to al Qaeda's act of terror."

It's these kind of formulations -- "they have been prepared to attribute
to" -- used by Harris, stated as if they were undeniable facts that I
disagree too. As far as I remember it's been the Bush-government who had put
the emphasis on the "enormous world-historical significance" of September
11, drawing the line in the sand, even waging two wars after it had
happened. That's the "world-historical significance" of 9/11, not what
Chomsky is or some conspiracy theorists are thinking about it.

There may be some leftists who were applauding to the WTC-events, hailing it
as the "the dawn of a new revolutionary era," but the overwhelming majority
of left-thinking people knew that all this would only lead to big shit, not
at all in the sense of  "the worse the better" -- which has always been the
justification for terrorists like the RAF calling themselves
"revolutionaries."

What's missing in the article is the important question why the terrorists
did it, something neocons can't explain but use very well for left-bashing
if the question is being asked. But neither Osama bin Laden nor Saddam
Hussein had anything to do with socialism, and Marx, Engels and Lenin
weren't responsible for September 11:

"But was 9-11 truly world-historical in the precise sense required to
sustain the Baran-Wallerstein revision? For 9-11 to be world-historical in
this sense, it would have to contain within it the seeds of a gigantic shift
in the order of things: something on the scale of the decline and collapse
of capitalist America and with it the final realization of the socialist
realm."

Nice try, to which I can only say:

Proverbs for Paranoids, 3:
If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry
about answers.

Trying to understand, looking for the real root causes of  "al Qaeda's act
of terror" doesn't automatically mean to call for world revolution. Harris
is simply wrong in assuming this.

"The left, if it is not to condemn itself to become a fantasy ideology, must
reconcile itself not only with the reality of America, but with its
dialectical necessity - America is the sine qua non of any future progress
that mankind can make, no matter what direction that progress may take."

The "dialectical necessity" -- now _he_ sounds like an orthodox Marxist
calling for many 9/11-like events. In the terms of the historical
materialism of course America first has to become fascist before people can
try if socialism isn't better (since we haven't seen any truly socialist
society on earth no one can say if this is true), because capitalism
inevitably seems to lead to poverty, fascism and war. Logically it's the
highest developed capitalist country that first has to go through fascism
before the real world revolution can break out and lead us to socialism, not
some remote Russia or torn to pieces Germany.

But maybe this is all bullshit because nobody who's not falling to a
"fantasy ideology" believes in the world revolution anymore, being left
today means believing in an ongoing fight for social justice, for adding
elements of democratic socialism within the capitalist system by electing
the right (left) people -- without terror that only makes it easy for the
capitalists and their puppet-governments to cut back social benefits and the
freedom of speech, the achievements our red grandfathers had fought for.

Otto