From: glevy@PRATT.EDU
Date: Wed May 18 2005 - 15:18:40 EDT
> I find that in a face-to-face exchange, it is more difficult to > waffle and avoid answering questions. [...] > I hope you have been more responsive to specifics in the > answer to my critique in Historical Materialism. Michael L, Well ... since you want John not to "waffle" and to not "avoid answering questions" and to "be more responsive to specifics" ... perhaps you could answer _his_ questions below being careful to be responsive to specifics? In solidarity, Jerry [...] My question is how this form of organisation affects the development of the struggle. Has it, for example, had the effect of diverting anti-capitalist struggle into the form of anti-imperialism, a form quite compatible with the continuation of exploitation and private ownership? I do not know, I ask. You say, in effect (and translating you into my terms) that the state has been trying to overcome its separation from society, to dissolve itself as a state and convert itself into a form of communal or council organisation. Is that what you're saying, is that really what's happening? And if that is what you're saying, can it really work? Is it possible for a state to dissolve itself into a radically different form of organisation, or will the established practices both of state functionaries and of the people themselves, and the integration of the state into the global multiplicity of states and above all the global movement of capital, not make that impossible? I ask. Has the Venezuelan state managed to liberate itself from the need to secure the profitability of capital? And if it has not broken from that need, does that mean that it necessarily promote the exploitation of labour? And if it has broken the need to secure profitability, this presumably can only be on the basis of the creation of an anti-capitalist form of social organisation. Is this what's happening? [...]
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