From:    Carrol Cox 
To:      marxism-international
Subject: Re: M-I: Reformism or sectarianism ?  (Ben replies to Louis
Date:    Tuesday, April 07, 1998 7:51 PM

> >Contradictions in the ruling class ?
> >   "[1]  The split in the bourgeoisie
> >   over policy for the digital infrastructure
> 
> Ben, you got to get away from the computer terminal once in a while. The
> ruling class "contradictions" over the Internet/free
> speech/commercialization questions are not even secondary, they are
> tertiary.

I'm trying to think if there is any way of grasping the
"reform/revolution" question in a way which gives it any life *at this
time*. (There have ben and there will be times when it will be truly
central, but in any way I have seen it expressed currently it is a mere
distraction from *either* reform or revolution.)

Let me creep up on it this way: If I *were* (at present) given to making a
big deal out of the disjunction, *very* close to the top of my list of
"reformist" and "counter-revolutionary" positions would be any attempt to
pontificate on "contradictions within the bourgeoisie." Pontificating on
such "contradictions"  was one of the very early signs of the utter
political irrelevance of Bob Avakian's Revolutionary Union / Revolutionary
Communist Party. It was a wholly empty attempt to mimic the revolutionary
practice of the Vietnamese and the Chinese under utterly dissimilar
conditions. In particular, it was an attempt to imitate the "United Front"
strategy of the CPC, when there was no peasantry and no "national
bourgeoisie" and no "rich peasants" to collect together in such a mock-up.

There are one or two other criteria I might apply if I were in the habit
of carrying on these mock battles. And every one of them would contribute
to a situation in which I had no one, reformist or revolutionary or
whatever, to work with--I would be unable to stay on the same maillist as
Ben, for example, with his reformist jabber about contradictions in the
bourgeosie and the fundamental changes brought about  electronic media and
etc.

Carrol


     --- from list marxism-international@lists.village.virginia.edu ---