04.18.09

Dialectics of the red terror, liquidating Hitchens?

Posted in 1848+, Ultra Far Left, you've got mail at 6:23 pm by nemo

RG mail:
Review of Lebowitz’s ‘The Path for Human Development’ See at bottom

Darwiniana:
These reaffirmations of the ’socialist’ project are compulsive reading for me, for some reason, but they are usually jargon-ridden rehashes that are too timid to even mention the history of Socialism, but I will give this one the benefit of the doubt, having not read it, and being abstractly interested in this issue, and possibly also because Hugo Chavez wants to go that route, but hasn’t clue, and because Chris Hedges and Naomi Klein (closet liberal or closet commie?) plus others have recently spoken out here, Klein not on socialism, but on a some kind of ‘political’ movement.
Is ’socialism’ a viable term any more. Please note that Klein being a liberal, no, and Hedges a christian, that both would be marked for liquidation in a socialist movement. My point: you cannot assume a continuity of language here, save that, dumbkopfen!!, most socialist fans do. That continuity of language takes you to the period of the lead up to Bolshevism. The inexorable progression from the nice guys to the dialectics of the red terror, and to Lenin’s relish in the liquidation of cadres, and class enemies, is clear from the record.
The left cannot simply pretend that never happened, and chant the old slogans.
Aha, you didn’t mean that, and promised to do better next time. But you too will get liquidated, and it won’t be up to us.

Since we are on the subject of liquidation here’s Hitchens in the shower. He’s onto something, as to liquidation.
The next socialist faq can use this picture as instructional material.
Hitchens as our official running dog worries me, he would get liquidated in the first round.

Come on, Hitch, think of something. Yes, we have it: here’s a neo-socialist signifier for ‘liquidation’:

Define liquidation for the socialist left, Hitchens. Better get cracking.

*21st Century on the Move – Reflections on ‘The Path for Human Development’*
By Ivan Drury.
Within an otherwise bleak reality of capitalist crisis, Mike Lebowitz has provided us with an eloquent restatement of the case for socialism – The Path for Human Development: Capitalism or Socialism? This short text is now circulating widely in Venezuela, in Spanish, as a pocket-sized pamphlet, has been published in Monthly Review, and is about to be published in Canada in pamphlet format by Socialist Project.

This is not the first text Lebowitz has published on the need to argue, fight for, and build socialism. The Path was written on the foundation of Lebowitz’s 2004 book Build It Now! Both works were written with the Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela in mind. This is no accident. Lebowitz, a professor from Canada, has been living in Venezuela for years and has been an active participant in the Bolivarian revolution. The imprint of that revolutionary process is strongly stamped on this
short work.

The Path argues that:

1. Full development of creative human potential is the goal of life for human beings.
2. This full development is impossible under capitalism.
3. Socialism – protagonist democracy in the economy and all aspects of social life – is the path to human development.

*Path breaking: a return to a socialist offensive*

In the minds of many workers and anti-capitalist activists, the positive attributes of the socialist goal are obscured by the monsters of 20th century bureaucratic states. The general points raised by The Path stand as corrections to this legacy of Stalinist horrors. Such states that claimed the mantle of communism have nothing in common with Lebowitz’s “development of human potential.”

The Path states, “Our goal cannot be a society in which some people are able to develop their capacities and others are not: we are interdependent, we are all
members of a human family. The full development of all human potential is our goal.” This recalls the manuscripts of the young Marx, where he sketches the blocks capitalism puts up against the free development of the creative, “sensuous” life of people. Lebowitz returns this theme in asking, “What do we all
want?” and answers “To be all that we can be.”

From decades of defense and retreat, in which socialism has been defined by excuse or apology for Stalinist crimes, The Path forges, yes, a path. It is a return to the offensive – defining the ideological terrain of 21st Century Socialism.

[cont'd through below links]

Socialist Voice: http://www.socialistvoice.ca/?p=379#more-379

Against Exceptionalism: http://ivandrury.wordpress.com/2009/04/16/ml/

Also; the Lebowitz article “The Path for Human Development: Capitalism or Socialism?” can be found through Monthly Review: http://monthlyreview.org/090223lebowitz.php

and as a printable pamphlet from Socialist Project: http://www.socialistproject.ca/upload/lebowitz.pdf

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