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Within the supposed communist movement in the West, there is only a mixed reaction to the Hezbollah, the "Party of God" operating globally on behalf of Islamic objectives, particularly the fight of Palestinians. An estimated militia of a mere 5000 people, Hezbollah has kicked I$rael out of occupying Lebanon once before (in 2000) and it is in the process of doing it again as we speak, with the war between the Zionist entity and Lebanon.
Islam and the Karl Rove strategy for war preparations
Although Hezbollah appears to have defeated the advanced I$raeli army, in the imperialist countries a majority of people calling themselves communist consider that Hezbollah is "backward." At the Trotskyist gathering place for a rally held in DC on behalf of Cuba May 20th, demonstrators sported banners saying "neither imperialism, nor Islam." In lockstep, others calling themselves communist and even "Maoist" said the same thing. On the one side was "imperialism," which refers to the last stage of the capitalist mode of production and its class, the imperialists. On the other side in opposition was a culture. Here is our problem: in Amerika we can never talk about class and nation directly. We mix in culture. So we speak asymmetrically, and thus with confusion.
The hard-core Trotskyist "Spartacist League" is having a hard time with the issue:
"As Trotskyists, we in the Spartacist League militarily defend Hezbollah against the Israeli military machine in this conflict, while maintaining our political opposition to this reactionary fundamentalist outfit."(1)
Yet it would be fair to say that most Amerikan communists would not go so far as to be in favor of cheerleading for Hezbollah militarily. In fact, most can be found saying nothing and others actually actively prepared the ground for I$rael's attack by joining Bush's culture wars. See for example Internet persynality Redstar make his contribution regarding International Wimmin's Day, the same as Bob Avakian's and Phyllis Chesler's--an attack on Iran literally as U.$. spotter troops were landing in Iran and as Bush and Rice sang along with supposed "revolutionary" Redstar. Yet even there, again there is confusion spread to blunt the class struggle. Redstar hails anyone to overthrow Iran's government (as would Bush), but he also fulminates against the mullahs, in whom of course the main organization behind the demonstrations Redstar supported would also have support. In other words, the people who organized the Iranian demonstration for International Wimmin's Day claimed to be Marxist and Islamic.
The opposition to the International Wimmin's Day demonstration and the organization for it in Iran were both Islamic. "Defenders of Islam are welcome to comment," says Redstar about Iran on International Wimmin's Day, as if Islam were only responsible for the repression of the rally and not also its organizing. So marks the victory of Karl Rove and the neo-conservatives, who have convinced most of Amerika that there is no such thing as politics, just lifestyle. Without adducing other evidence, just from reading his Iran comments, one can only hope Redstar is on State Department/CIA payroll too, because provision of such services to imperialism for free would be even more depressing to contemplate.
Karl Rove recently repeated that Amerikans are "not policy wonks." They respond to lifestyle, so in Ohio, Rove arranged for the ballot question on gay marriage and a mass mailing to gun-owners for the re-election of his boss Bush in November, 2004. When they use these lifestyle issues the Rove people do not write detailed political tracts. They just knew in 2004 that if they bring these people to the voting booth based on lifestyle, they will vote on lifestyle and they will lose some of these fuzzy people as Kerry voters, but the majority will go Rove's way. Rove knew this from study before-hand the same way MIM knows what is happening from studying the labor aristocracy before-hand in any strategic or tactical situation.
State Department and CIA officials being of more intellectual background than the average gay-basher respond more to the veil issue, but whether gay marriage, gun-ownership or the veil, in any case it's a lifestyle issue. After all, it's not as if the united $tates has military bases in scores of countries and spends hundreds of billions of dollars a year on important questions like the military, and certainly there is no multi-trillion dollar debt for Medicare and Social Security looming. People who talk like that do not understand that there is a science of politics that Rove uses for his agenda: the only trouble is that MIM's opposition whether Bush or left-wing parasitism uses the same science for exploiter ends. The left-wing version of exploiter political science is as much trouble as the Bush version, because the left-wing version of parasitism can confuse different people than Bush can. The left-wing of parasitism contains a cynical, paid part working for Bush, a portion that agrees with Bush for free and a small minority portion of mostly inexperienced youth that is less politically scientific than Rove and thus potentially duped.
When MIM says one cannot go to the labor aristocracy with the veil question and expect a revolutionary response, quite the contrary, just militarism, our parasite Left dupes don't get it, but Rove does. Either one side or the other is correct. Either a white youth minority is correct that white so-called workers are objectively revolutionary or MIM is correct that going to them with the veil question will reveal their true nature as militarist and parasitic. The question is scientific with profound implications. One leads toward counterrevolutionary war-mongering and the other refuses to do Rove's work for him. Because of that fact, MIM does not recognize as fraternal any comrades who believe they do not have to choose on the so-called white working class.
What we are seeing with the facts of U.$. support for I$rael is the real deal, the united front of Bush and the left-wing of parasitism that MIM has always talked about. This united front is 100% real with real individuals and leading lights. In the open at this time are Phyllis Chesler, Bob Avakian and Redstar working together to lead Bush's culture war for the left-wing of parasitism. Avakian's organization and Chesler have a history of working together, as can be found from jointly signed documents on Avakian's website. Redstar echoes the same things just from the vantage point that Avakian should not be the leader of left-wing parasitism.
Meanwhile, under Lenin, sharia courts came into the open. In other words, there is a class struggle and politics way of going about things and there is the social, lifestyle-oriented cultural warrior way of doing things. Ironically Lenin's way did more to transform culture than other methods taken. What matters is the power wimmin of Central Asia and the Middle East have to fend off sexual threats from the West and elsewhere. Lenin and Stalin fought for the status of wimmin across-the-board through political means, not by focus on one particular lifestyle or another in front of the labor aristocracy. Tension across nationalities is inevitable enough without having people like today's Bush lackeys foment it.
The cultural warriors are into Red States (who voted for Bush) versus Blue States (who voted for Gore and Kerry), literally over the lifestyles at stake. They then extend that globally. We can only imagine that Bush would be in culture war trouble if Al Qaeda or the Taliban came out against abortion! Imagine if Osama Bin Laden came out with a video opposing abortion just before the November elections. Ironically, the Red States would probably accept the hit, if they continued getting government jobs to fight wars in the Middle East funded by the Blue States that became hyped up for fighting the cultural war abroad.
As it is now, Bush is scoring big time. Bush confuses what on the surface appears to be his real opposition by raising the Islam question. The people who claim to oppose Bush the most are instead sucked into ambiguity as to whether politics and class are more important or culture is more important. Bush has half the left- wing of parasitism using the term "clerico-fascism" again in a manner blunting any possible opposition to Bush's wars. There is no such thing as "fascism" not involving capitalism dominated by multinational banks. They have turned even fascism into a lifestyle question unconnected to the mode of production.
We have one thing to say to followers of the Bush/Rice/Rove/Avakian/Chesler/Redstar line: "Defenders of oppressed nations are welcome to comment," in MIM circles. Anti-imperialists are welcome in MIM circles. We're not fighting Karl Rove's culture war for him. By now only the psychotic of the parasite Left cannot see that the culture war leads directly and quickly to imperialist military war. It is how the imperialists conduct war preparations among Amerikans, Brits etc. who are too apolitical in the sense of the word "political" that most real political activists understand. Bush and Rove carry over their techniques from the campaign to build wars and the left- wing of parasitism is helping. Meanwhile we at MIM leave supporting Rove to the people on U.S. government payroll.
Demonstrate in imperialist countries for Iranian wimmin in their own twisted way while U.$. troops were landing, these culture warriors for Bush and Rove had to on International Wimmin's Day. But where were they when Fox News plastered us with the story of Katherine Lester, the young Michigan womyn who planned a marriage to a Palestinian man only to cause an FBI international search and the loss of her own passport for no legal reason. Yes, as I$rael was killing people in the Gaza Strip, where were the CIA agents, the ENTIRETY of Redstar's beloved Che-Libs pot-smoking league, Workers World, Spartacist League, fake Maoists etc when it came to beating back this vile attack on Palestinian men as if they were unworthy of dating Amerikans? As if 17 year-old wimmin should have their passports taken away by biological parents and government parents? The answer is silence, despite these Liberals' usual preference to fight for the rights of youth. So contrary to what many in the world think, the Amerikans are not even consistent in their sexual liberalism, because white nationalism has greater precedence, if the choice ever has to be made.
Understandably, some of us were too busy to respond to the Katherine Lester issue, but I mean that pretty much the entirety of the whole left-wing of parasitism did not respond. Soon after the Lester propaganda, I$rael launched its Lebanon war--with no mea culpas coming from the left-wing of Amerikan parasitism, because these people just ARE that deluded and really cannot see their own political role in this. It would be asking the petty-bourgeoisie to believe in classes and nations and it's not going to happen when there are such riveting stories of culture war to tell. The idea that wimmin's liberation occurs in a political context is missing for these folks, but then again, politics as a whole is missing for these folks. The idea that there might be a patriotic way to fight for wimmin's rights in Iran is completely beyond thinking. These Amerikan sexual liberals all implicitly assume it has to be done on the back of Rove-style culture war sponsored by the West.
One of the most important political preparations for the military attack on Islamic peoples comes from Trotskyism's analysis that says imperialism still brings progress to "backward" countries. That is why Bush's closest military advisers called "neo-conservatives" are former Trotskyists.
In contrast, real Maoists believe that the "principal contradiction" is between imperialism and the oppressed nations. We hold that imperialism is decadent, not just for the imperialist country people themselves but even moreso for the Third World. So for example, the Spartacist League advocated more Western investment in apartheid South Africa to speed up capitalist "progress." We said they sped up exploitation and prepared the ground for repression of African people.
Is Hezbollah backward?
There are several levels to the meaning of the word "backward." Relative to I$rael, Hezbollah has not much of an air force, so in that sense, Hezbollah, a fighting organization has to be considered backward. Across-the-board, I$rael has the advantage in technological warfare. In fact, throughout the Middle East, I$rael has the technological advantage compared with any country. This has led to Islam's taking the blame for lagging behind imperialist countries. Yet what is true is that what is said about Islam would be true of the Third World as a whole.
There are certain advantages that imperialist countries obtain from exploiting other countries for oil, labor etc. One advantage is the resulting freedom to hire more engineers and scientists than a country would otherwise be able to afford. So yes, Uncle $am and I$rael have the advantage over all the countries with majority Islamic populations, but they have that same advantage over the other Third World countries too, so the cause of that inequality is not culture, but exploitation.
The problem is that I$rael has the advantage over Hezbollah technologically and even numerically, since I$rael can field a six digit army or more. Yet I$rael has that same advantage over all of Lebanon, including Christian Lebanon, even moreso. The imperialists believe Hezbollah is the most advanced fighting force in Lebanon, and that looks to be true. So the question is "backward" relative to what. Hezbollah is backward relative to our memories of Mao and Ho. Hezbollah is not backward relative to what exists in Lebanon right now.
Since the answer is that Hezbollah is leading an actual fight against imperialism that no one else in Lebanon can right now, we need to admit to ourselves the need to strip away a layer of this question. The question is not really if Hezbollah is backward. The question is if Lebanon and its allies are backward. The answer is "yes," and that is on account of imperialism's influence. So we have to beat back the cultural confusion and return the question to nation and class.
By posing the question of whether Hezbollah is backward, we can make the mistake of locating the real issue in culture wars--religion in particular. Maoism is very explicit that seeing imperialist war as culture conflict is wrong. I$rael has material reasons for its aggression in the Gaza Strip, Lebanon and the Golan Heights--and it would not matter what I$rael's religion were and no matter if Lebanon were majority Christian instead of having just a substantial fraction. One material reason for I$raeli aggression is land and another is pleasing its ally the united $tates that supplies its economy and military billions each year.
The correct question to ask is behind Hezbollah's existence. Hezbollah is not backward because it is Muslim. Rather it is backward in some senses only in that it gains support in nations oppressed by imperialism. It is much more accurate to say that Hezbollah is Muslim, because imperialism is backward or Hezbollah is a product of a backward Third World in general.
The same advantages that I$rael has are general advantages the bourgeoisie has over the proletariat. I$rael has better access to education and a better economy; therefore, it is not a surprise that I$rael has the bourgeois engineers and allies who can give I$rael a military edge. So when we say that Hezbollah is "backward," we have to be careful not to spread bourgeois ideology. There are some senses in which the proletariat is backward relative to the bourgeoisie at the moment or it would have overthrown the bourgeoisie already. So an important part of the question is the trend, what MIM calls the natural goals of the proletariat.
It only makes sense to raise the culture wars if indeed the West is more advanced than the oppressed countries. If the West is more progressive than any force in the oppressed nations, then neo-conservatism and Trotskyism make more sense.
Stalin, Trotsky and multinational oppressors
The most militant Trotskyists are only the most confused. In the very same article that it defends Hezbollah "militarily," by which it means by cheerleading for military action, the Spartacist League headlines the article by calling for a federation for the Middle East. They're not talking about Islamic or Arab federation: they mean including I$rael.
People who think we are much beyond debating what Stalin and Trotsky debated are wrong. History has not progressed so much since them that we are in a new stage on the question of dialectics and uneven development.
If like MIM you think the idea of a headline for Mideast federation far- fetched, then you believe that it would basically boil down to "waiting for I$raeli workers," just as Stalin said Trotsky's reasoning amounted to "waiting for Western workers." It's hard to see what good waiting for I$raeli so-called workers would do for Lebanese youth firing off anti-tank rockets at I$raeli youth in tanks. Yet this federation idea is in the headlines of Spartacist League articles on the subject today. It stands in contradiction to the idea of standing with Hezbollah and Lebanon militarily.
The root problem is the same as always. The federation with I$rael concept condones the idea that there is some compromise with the I$raeli petty- bourgeoisie (called workers in agreed-upon white nationalist code language) that would pull off a Mideast unity. That's why when the Trotskyists say they are for cheerleading for "military victory," it means nothing unless it is followed by "toward a joint dictatorship of the proletariat of the oppressed nations over imperialism." What the Trotskyists are leaving unclear intentionally in their headline is whether or not it would be politically possible and justified to mollify the I$raeli population into accepting such a federation. The Trotskyists thus leave open wiggle room to cater to exploiter demands to dismantle the just struggle of the Arabs. That is inevitable because no Trotskyist has ever accurately assessed the imperialist class structure as being overwhelmingly exploiter, not exploited.
Thus, we have to beware people talking about "multinational" or "multiracial" working classes trying to operate across the oppressor versus oppressed divide. Mao did not launch a multinational struggle with Japanese workers to form a socialist federation of Japan, China and Korea, despite Japan's 1930s claims that some sort of federation like that was in East Asia's interests. We can see the method of the Trotskyist psychosis: wherever there is a problem, wish for the workers to be the same and united while neglecting especially the spoils of parasitism that could divide workers and turn one country's workers into a bourgeoisie. Today, Japan's people with worker ancestors are bourgeoisie. There is no potential socialist Co-Prosperity Sphere that has any political reality to it--thanks to uneven development and how Japanese workers became much richer than Chinese ones to the point of becoming a petty-bourgeoisie.
Likewise, the Soviet Revolution was multinational but ended in separate republics. More importantly, it was not like the public opinion situation today where only 6% of Amerikans take Lebanon's side in the 2006 war with I$rael. In Lenin's day, pretty much all of Russia knew that there had to be some kind of revolution against tsarism. Russian workers were a tad more advanced than wanting just capitalism and they were good enough to serve as a force to bring down Russian imperialism temporarily. Then too the economic condition of the Russian worker only half-way resembles that of the Western imperialist countries. Outside of Russia--in Trotsky's beloved Germany for instance--Trotskyism has proved to have no case at all. Only the most pitifully forlorn do not recognize that now with what happened in World War II and its aftermath.
The political situation is much more that the Palestinians and Arabs generally must eject I$raelis and repulse their attacks as Mao had to drive out the Japanese. To speak of the "one state solution" as if a federation based on waiting for I$raeli so-called workers is in the cards is wrong. If there is a one state solution, it will be under Arab joint dictatorship of the proletariat over the Zionists. One reason for that is that the Russian Revolution had no labor aristocracy worth mentioning, but I$rael has no potentialities of internal socialist revolution because of its petty-bourgeois class; although imperialist country Jews are more moderate in their anti-communism than Amerikans generally by far.
The Spartacist League is not the only one which holds an impossible mish-mash of views. We received a letter alleging to be from a Romanian Trotskyist, that calls for global revolution while "standing alongside Hezbollah." In response to this same old Trotskyist rhetoric about simultaneous global revolution, we admit if there were a global proletariat ready to fight for revolution benefitting Lebanon, MIM would be wrong to turn it down. Life has turned out to be more uneven than that.
The alleged Romanian Trotskyist writer who claims to have a book coming out for Trotskyism says:
Whoever upholds the principle of non-interference rejects,in fact, the reality that the world is an INTEGRATED SYSTEM, and acting outside your borders means acting inside them, interfering in other countries' internal affairs leads not to the weakening, but to the strengthening of socialism INSIDE the borders, because it means joining forces with foreign workers. Forget me if i sound like your average neocon, but you never admitted that neocons are basically right when they say or imply that the world is one integrated place.
Yet then our critic admits Hezbollah is an exception right after denouncing the national bourgeoisie in the usual Trotskyist fashion.
Accurately assessing where the military fight against u.$. imperialism is today
This is something that our Westernizers that are supposedly communist need to understand: Opposing Hezbollah or vacillating in their regard is sectarianism of the most profound kind, because the usual use of the word "sectarian" should be more properly named scientific conflict. There is no more profound kind of sectarianism than introducing cultural conflict into the oppressed nations and classes. It is not sectarian for MIM to stoutly oppose this sectarianism. That is just the lazy, unthinking approach of those who believe there is no such thing needed as struggle, science or theory. This sectarianism that MIM opposes is the communist parties of the West putting the needs of their organizations above the solidarity of Lebanese against the imperialist onslaught. That is important sectarianism involving splitting millions of people, while most of what gets called sectarianism is just the hurt feelings of some effete arm-chair revolutionaries. The Western labor aristocracy organizations are trying to split the Lebanese people and rile them against "backward" Hezbollah, just for the needs of the Western exploiter organizations' own recruits. That is the textbook case of sectarianism for our day.
If we look around the world today, again, where is U.$. imperialism receiving its harshest blows? Let's start with Iraq. Was there a Trotskyist or Maoist armed struggle going on? No. The ultimate national bourgeoisie turned against u.$. imperialism and paid with their lives, in the case of Saddam Hussein's sons. This struggle is costing u.$. imperialism more troops and equipment than any other, so what is the basis of Trotskyist fantasy? How can it write off the national bourgeoisie? Is it not writing off the whole Iraqi struggle then? If Trotskyists were to write off Iraq on behalf of a proletarian movement taking up arms against imperialism that actually existed, that would be one thing. Telling MIM that Hezbollah is the "exception" is indicative of a detachment from reality.
Then what about place number two behind the Iraqis in the pantheon of today's heroes fighting u.$. imperialism: if it is not Lebanon's Hezbollah then it is Afghanistan. Here again it is U.$. lackeys turning against the united $tates. The Taliban received hundreds of millions of aid from Colin Powell just before 9/11, not to mention the support since the Carter administration for attacking the Soviet social-imperialists.
Our allegedly Romanian critic spinning for the neo-conservatives tries to tell us that only where the proletariat drags along the national bourgeoisie can the national bourgeoisie play a role. Yet, that is not how it is happening in the oppressed Islamic countries. The collapse of the Soviet Union did not make Trotskyist fantasies about the national bourgeoisie true in 2006. What happens in Iraq is much more like one section of the capitalist class driving another section into the proletariat--an inevitability with the process of the concentration of capital, and another reason that Trotskyist fantasy is untrue. At the beginning the national bourgeoisie is rich, involved in local politics and taking aid from the united $tates. Then some of the national bourgeoisie takes up arms against the united $tates. It was Uncle $am that ground up its own ex-puppets and created the basis of bourgeois-led armed struggle against u.$. imperialism. The bourgeoisie leads that struggle, but of course its participants are solid proletarians and oppressed nationality material.
So in 2006 it is the same as in 1923: the Trotskyists are deluded. They told us in World War II that the German soldiers would fraternize with the people they conquered and become the socialist leaders of world revolution. Yet today there are still psychotic people who cannot figure out that that was not factual reality and that the whole strategy flowing from that premise with false hopes in the German labor aristocracy is fatal to the proletariat. It's little wonder that all energies dedicated to Trotskyism since the death of Lenin have been wasted energies: Trotskyists don't buy Stalin's and Mao's idea about principal contradiction. Yet, effective action depends on an accurate and penetrating connection to reality, for the same reason drunks do not make good car drivers.
At the moment, the national bourgeoisie is willing to take more heat from the imperialists than anyone else in a military sense and even anti-militarist movements in the imperialist countries are weak, no where close to turning into revolutions. Misled by revisionism, our Third World workers still pose no direct threat to imperialism under their own class's leadership. In response to this, in the face of these flare-ups in the Middle East, the Trotskyist theory says to capitulate to "one integrated system."
We wish we could say that the ones repelling Amerikan, I$raeli or any imperialists troops were proletarian-led forces at this time. It is not true and goes to show how Trotskyism does not even deserve to be debated at this time.
The reality that would have to exist for a simultaneous global offensive
The whole idea of a simultaneous global revolution from Trotskyism stems from how the Western worker, the German worker was supposedly going to bring Europe to socialism and set the colonies free. None of that happened and it's too bad truthiness a la Stephen Colbert blocks the absorption of that fact. All of Trotskyism and much of anarchism is based on the idea that European workers were going to take down capitalism any minute. It's obvious that was wrong factually- speaking, and factually-speaking is what matters. It's not "wow, Iranian womyn has the veil, so we should go kick some imperialist ass and free the Iranian proletariat." The view from the Western labor aristocracy is "wow, Iranian womyn has the veil so we should bomb that uncivilized country." From Bush supporters this is not surprising, but coming from the left-wing of parasitism still falsely claiming interest in revolution or progressive politics, it is touching white nationalism overlooking the faults of the white population.
The parasite Left activists are claiming that Western people are better than to want to bomb "uncivilized" Iran. They keep telling us the effect of their work on the veil and Iran's nuclear energy is not militarism, because of their touching faith in the white nation--no matter what the facts are, no matter how many polls and no matter how many war crimes say otherwise. They do not notice how the Iran conflict boosts Bush's approval ratings. They also want to tell us they are anti-fascist, as if war against supposedly horribly inferior people is not usually the excuse for fascism.
Dualism versus dialectical materialism
It's not that there is not a "logical" way out "if only" the Western so-called worker rose up and thus there was a global offensive against capitalism instead of just an oppressed nation offensive. "If only" and "what if" is the question of the idealist, of the dualist. Redstar falls into this dualist boat also in which the "is" and "ought" are separated, so that we might as well advocate whatever "ought" we want regardless of facts. It's not surprising because Redstar openly opposes dialectics. Bush administration agent Bob Avakian also massacres dialectics and pushes his zombies into dualism. The Trotskyists and other Bush administration lackeys usually have in common disdain for the labor theory of value and dialectics.
With regard to dialectics, it is not that activist words can call forward any reality we want. Talking about the veil in front of Amerikans does not overall produce a feminist response. That's not up to us, but material reality as it is. Even after 60 million voted for Bush, the left-wing of parasitism ever faithful to the white nation will not admit it.
Because of the failures of the parasite Left in politics, the dualists are re- emerging and reinforcing past Western communist failures. They find the failure to revolution a license to advocate touching white nationalist fantasies that would have warmed Hitler's heart. After all, after they make excuses for the Western petty-bourgeoisie to the point of forgetting their beloved Germans of 1945 and the real revolution then, there is no MIM revolution to prove them wrong, so the Redstars, Cheslers and Avakians feel free to overestimate the character of the white so-called workers by putting blinders on regarding revolutions that have happened in the rest of the world in the meantime.
So for these dualists, how they picture change happening is by some pure state of mind free of Stalin's defects, free of all humyn defects in reality. This pure state of mind then captures the white so-called workers. Fanon would have recognized a genocidal anti-dialectic at work in our parasite Left, because the demand for purity is the impulse of the oppressor to annihilate the oppressed completely out of existence--thus no struggle, no dialectics, just a fantasy of purity.
There is no hope for the psychotic among the dualists, those most detached from reality, the left-wing versions of Cheney that are at bottom going to ally with their exploiter class and oppressor nation. What MIM tries to do is show people the tactics that correspond to reality, the choices that ARE open in struggle while avoiding the pitfalls. Bringing the veil question to the West encourages a militarist response. However, we can bring forward the Katherine Lester issue at this time to defeat militarism and advance the feminist cause. Likewise, bringing Nabokov to Iran is in fact advancing gender oppression, because the gender oppressed are not safe in a system of sexual liberalism. What we can bring forward is that Iranian wimmin should have the right to hunt u.$. psy-war operatives on the ground in Iran and perform other patriotic duties the same way as men.
One reason that ultra-utopian dualism retains popularity is that when MIM says only some gender issues can bring actual advance, the feel-good crowd pretends we live in some period when the whole capitalist system is hanging by a thread. As in any good oscillation, at one moment the petty-bourgeoisie is despondent and at the next moment maniacally optimistic. In the optimistic swing, we can supposedly carry forward the gender struggle with almost any tactics at hand.
At that moment when the proletariat has such a concentrated strength in the background fantasies of the ultra-utopians, when the proletariat seems like a muscle-bound youth bursting out of clothing at the seams, it could be anything that topples the whole system and brings transformation at any minute. So then there is no need for picking and choosing principal battles, and principal contradictions. All that is needed is for the champion fighter to start swinging his fists.
Those who know they are dualists without a revolutionary vehicle are Bush agents. Those who are too psychotic to know it end up anarchists. The dualists feel free to substitute their own fantasies for the Christian afterlife. They continue the gap between "is" and "ought" by pursuing a goal unconnected to reality directly.
In contrast, Marx came up with dialectical materialism to account for the process of change, to account for how what is now becomes the future. Dialectical materialism is about what is effective at the margins.
Stock-traders try to decide where to throw all their money. A quickly rising stock becomes the place to put all one's extra money. The stock trader comes up with a strategy of what to do at the margin, where to place extra surplus.
Likewise, Stalin and Mao said we communists must also figure out where to dedicate our energies. That is why they used the dialectical concept of principal contradiction to direct strategy.
The principal contradiction is not passive as in social-democratic theories of class struggle. Like getting involved with a rising stock in the stock market, getting involved with energies in the principal contradiction shows the greatest gains for the proletariat. Someone realized that once Hezbollah mastered ground warfare sufficiently to be able to protect an anti-tank squad, a little extra effort with anti-tank rockets would bring a great payoff, as in $5000 in hardware defeating $3 million in hardware. Someone understood the principal tactical contradictions facing Lebanese when I$rael invades. It was not a case where something passively happened. By all accounts it was a minority of fighters who defeated I$rael.
In the social-democratic or mechanistic account of causation, astronomy is the overriding background influence, when planets circle stars regardless of humyn desires. It is a small distance from contemplating the Earth circling the Sun to saying, "there is nothing I can do about it," and "if I am going to do something about it, I'm going to imagine a perfect Heaven beyond the control of the forces making the Earth circle the Sun." Such is the illness of dualism where a material world is clearly recognized but the dualist also detaches a world of political goals and religion opposed to it.
For us following dialectical materialism, it is clear that a social-democratic or mechanistic theory of knowledge production would have brought Hezbollah defeat--and long ago. Humyn action of the minority did matter because the Lebanese found the equivalent of a hot stock on the stock market to bet on. Once they set up their defensive positions based on previous experience with the I$raelis, they added a few more decisive elements--mostly missiles including anti-tank rockets--despite the overwhelming overall material superiority of the I$raelis. When Hezbollah added those rockets, the I$raelis still had material superiority on the order of 100 or more to 1. Yet dialectical materialism does not benefit the oppressor, because the Marxist view of how the world works is correct. The I$raelis had the schooling to learn dialectical materialism, but the Hezbollah applied dialectics without calling it that. We can name such the paradigm example of how class struggle really occurs. The oppressor appears to have many advantages, but the oppressed still have desire and thus a will to learn.
One of the advantages that the proletariat has is that the capitalist class inevitably has to believe some of its own propaganda even in warfare. Yet what is good for military contractors is not necessarily good for warfare. What is good for self-image of parasites is also not necessarily good for warfare. Bourgeois ideology says having a three million dollar tank makes one superior. This ideology is so pervasive that social-democrats among the exploited even believe it is futile to fight the capitalist system, thanks to its military technology. Dialectics prepares us for the idea that reality is uneven, for the same reason that Lebanon and its allies fell so far behind Amerika and I$rael in the first place. It may be true that face-to-face with a $3 million tank it has the advantages in almost all ways that one can think, and not in all circumstances will it be the loser. But even for the $3 million tank, there turns out to be a $5000 solution and no reason for fatalistic views of materialism grounded in astronomy. For the stock trader much of the stock world remains the same and there is nothing the trader can do overall about it, but when the trader picks the right vehicle, the right stock, nothing else will matter. Likewise in politics, Lebanon has the proletariat and oppressed nation, the social group on the rise. It cannot rise just anywhere it wants, but it is rising in an uneven way.
Conclusion
Marx's labor theory of value says that surplus-value (the basis for profits) comes from productive sector workers, not office workers. Yet Trotskyism says that Western so-called workers are the most advanced despite being mostly office workers. Trotskyism's kind of "advance" makes the Western so-called workers excellent vehicles for bringing "democracy" to Iraq as Bush figured out.
Our supposed Romanian Trotskyist says:
a victory of socialism in one country can not be durable without a world revolution, and, unfortunately, history proved Trotsky right.No, history did not prove Trotsky right. In fact, history has been much kinder to Sultan-Galiyev. No Western worker socialist revolution has happened in Trotsky's lifetime or since. Defeat of Stalin and Mao's successors is not the same thing as victory for Trotskyists' successors, unless we count the neo-conservatives as Trotsky's real successors. The defeat was not a victory for some other socialism but for capitalism. Being proved right means not mentally or in feel-good politics but in actual historical fact. There has been no global revolution, no global offensive and countless strategies and tactics based on the assumption of the possibility of simultaneous global offensive are still polluting our movement and setting it back. To the extent that existing revolutionary forces coordinate their offensives, that could be a great thing, but to wait for the imperialist country workers is to invite further intensification of oppression.
Whether it is waiting for more than 6% of Amerikans to support the right side in Lebanon (and not just supporting but making revolution in support of Lebanon) or waiting for I$raeli so-called workers to see the light on Palestine, Trotskyism is obviously hopeless just on the basis of those two causes alone. The only kind of global revolution that can happen with those kinds of obstacles are imperialist revolutions, political revolutions of fascism or failure as seen in Iraq today.