Re: Annan blames Ethiopia... (fwd)

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 11 Apr 2000 12:51:32 -0400 (EDT)
From: Andrew Wayne Austin <aaustin@utkux.utcc.utk.edu>
To: Spectors <spectors@netnitco.net>
Subject: Re: Annan blames Ethiopia...

Alan,

It is very important to criticize the leaders of various movements. And we
must not just agree with struggle but participate in it. I am not thinking
in rigid Leninist terms of national-bourgeoisie revolutions leading to a
series of stages towards socialist revolution. I am making a more general
argument that posits an ethical principle about a people's right to be
free from colonization and imperialism, even if the character of the
colonized society is not socialist. For example, the preservation of the
right of a capitalist society that does not practice slavery and genocide
to be free of the tyranny of a society that does enslave and murder people
seems correct to me. Yes, the first society is a capitalist society, but
comparatively it is a freer society. Moreover I believe this principle is
connected to the larger struggle against capitalism: since it is
capitalism's nature to colonize and imperialize -- it must do this to
reproduce itself -- it weakens capital to restrain it. This is why it is
useful to oppose the WTO, IMF, and other transnational organizations
seeking to open capital flows to the their maximum. I disagree with those
who argue that opposition to free trade is only a petty bourgeois /
populist-nationalist interest. Third world nationalist movements have the
potential of gumming up the works, even if their character is not
democratic socialist. However, your assessment of the success of the
movements you cite is correct, Alan. Too often what appears to be popular
movements are actually orchestrated by imperialist forces establishing
populist-nationalist client regimes. Ultimately, there needs to be a
global democratic socialist victory.

I do disagree with the quoted material about self-determination. For
Marxists (at least as I understand it), there is ultimately no distinction
to be drawn between self and society. In capitalist society, by degrees,
the self is alienated from society, and this is expressed in decline of
solidarity and the nihilism of selfishness. Self-determination for a
people is a desire to overcome this nihilism, organize around an idea
greater than one self, rehabilitate solidarity, and return society to the
collective self. The ultimate transcending of the self-society dichotomy
will come with the establishment of a communist society, but this does not
mean that relative dealienation cannot occur in other contexts. Capitalist
societies can be improved (Sweden is preferable to the United States, for
example). Please don't mistake this for support for capitalism. Democratic
socialism is the necessary alternative. I am just concerned with human
beings in the meantime. In any case, I think the quote you have provided
plays a game with the word "self," restricting its definition only to a
solitary ego, when in the Marxian tradition self has a different meaning.
Democracy, to take the clearest example, is, from the Marxian perspective,
self-determination.

Andrew Austin