(no subject)
I recently read Full Spectrum Disorder, by Stan Goff. Goff is ex Army Special Forces, now a socialist. He has some really interesting analysis of the US Empire and how it is already falling apart. I especially like that he understands that dollar hegemony is "a global credit scam" supported by the US military. In the book he tells the story of a Pathet Lao guerilla who buys a few things from a Chinese vendor with the Pathet Lao currency. Shortly after, a journalist tries to pay for cigarettes with the Pathet Lao currency, but the vendor refuses it. The journalist argues that the vendor just accepted the same currency from the guerilla. "Yes," says the vendor, "but he had the gun."
This comes from Goff's article Phase One Against Empire, published on ZNet:In the face of the terrifying reaction of the Republican Party, those who were engaged in advocacy for labor, women, oppressed nationalities, queer folk, and environmentalists--having had that advocacy delimited to policy debates and piecemeal (mostly defensive) legislative struggles--were driven into the most humiliating states of dependency on Democrats. This dependency created the conditions for the bizarre 2004 election spectacle in which the majority of a mass movement against the war in Iraq, including many leftists, was stampeded into actively campaigning for a pro-war candidate, and tying itself in rhetorical knots to justify this "strategy." In the greatest irony of all, the reactionary party still won the elections.
No wonder that election made me so nauseous. The general strategy he lays out in that essay make a lot of sense to me.
This comes from Goff's article Phase One Against Empire, published on ZNet:In the face of the terrifying reaction of the Republican Party, those who were engaged in advocacy for labor, women, oppressed nationalities, queer folk, and environmentalists--having had that advocacy delimited to policy debates and piecemeal (mostly defensive) legislative struggles--were driven into the most humiliating states of dependency on Democrats. This dependency created the conditions for the bizarre 2004 election spectacle in which the majority of a mass movement against the war in Iraq, including many leftists, was stampeded into actively campaigning for a pro-war candidate, and tying itself in rhetorical knots to justify this "strategy." In the greatest irony of all, the reactionary party still won the elections.
No wonder that election made me so nauseous. The general strategy he lays out in that essay make a lot of sense to me.