The FARC-EP: Red-headed stepchild of 1st world revolutionaries. Good, bad or just keepin it real?

i was alive at the time, if not in vietnam, and it was abundantly obvious to me that the VC were a bunch of totalitarians. and as for dissenters...

Jonnyflash, where do you draw the line in supporting anti-imperialist and national liberation movements? Would you support the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, the PKK in Turkey, Shining Path in Peru? If you would have supported the VC in Vietnam would you have supported the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia? I'm not saying this is your position but I'd be genuinely interested to know where you make a distinction and why.

Also the 'communism' of FARC is pretty objectionable, I mean really what we are talking about is state managed top down nationalised enterprises. Even in strictly economic terms (and there is a lot more to the Columbian situation than this) as workers they are hardly worth supporting.

Johnnyflash, now, you're really starting to piss me da fuck off! You posted three successive ranting posts. Three. Each one extolling the virtues of a movement that is a top down national liberation movement that is leading the working class into a death trap. You know what I think of the FARC. I think that it's sad that they have the workers believeing in their bullshit. That's what I think. I'm a Communist. I fight for Communism, directly for Communism, live it, breath it, have been hospitalized for it, arrested for it, and lost jobs for it -- and still haven't suffered as much as the millions and millions who have died fighting for it only to be led into the valley of death by Ho Chi Minh clones ordering his most dedicated NLF fighters into suicide missions so he can get a better bargaining position in France. Fuck the VietCong. I would NEVER have supported them had I been alive then. I know many people who didn't. My loyalty is with the working class, not their charlatans nor their illusions.

I find it so sad that so many people on the left take the reactionary position that anybody shooting at the US must be the good guys. No man, Hezbollah, Hamas, and FARC are just a bunch of lil' bosses who wanna get real big. They mystify the masses of workers and peasants into believing their line of bullshit. If I were in Columbia, and I know this first hand, I would be shot by the FARC. They are counter-revolution. They are creating a state. They are the enemy.

Now, the question is, what do I mean by "they". "They" would be those who are indemnified to maintaining the social relationship of capital and the organization of FARC against the needs of the working class. The working class must be facilitated to meet their own needs, have the state decentralized from the ruling bourgeoisie and centralized within the entire working class as the negation of the proletariat into a stateless society, and be free to directly meet their own needs. The FARC are centralizing power within the organization, not the working class. 'Nuff said.

Yes. I honestly believe that all statist, capitalist, militarist, ideologies need to be struggled against. Yup.

The FARC kills platformists. So, using your logic, I guess they aren't a real world movement.

Oh really? And what would that be? That the only method of workers' liberation is to rely upon some organization to lead them to the land of milk and honey. And good ole Moses cum FARC is gonna give 'em grapes the size of melons and that anybody that's an enemy of my enemy must be my friend? Uhm, yeah, after a century of national lib bullshit, some of us have learned from the mistakes of the revolutionary movement and are trying to build the next world within the carcass of this one. "The idea is the thing" by Berkman (he states that the ideas of the revolution will create the future of the revolution) and "The ends are a ways to a means" are two classic precepts that you seem to be missing. You sound like a confusionist/revisionist CPUSA, RCP, relic.

Johnnyflash, listen well when I say that the masses of peasants and workers in the USA are the Republican Party! Should we support them? Sounds a bit ludicrous huh? Yeah. Again, what .001% of the world's population is revolutionary, if that? So, should we build a movement to smash the state, smash capitalism, smash the oppression that binds us, or should we just settle for whatever is out there because hey, it's what da workers believe?

The masses of the peasants, workers, indigenous, are the proletariat, are the working class and just because they've bought into some capitalist mystification, does not mean that their class nature changes. For you to subsume them under a group is to lack a class analysis of what's going on in Columbia.

Principled "anti-imperialists"!!! You've got to be fuckin' kiddin' me. principled pro-capitalists who are eventually, and are in the process of, dominating, controlling, and killing workers. Yeah, they've got principles all right, and so did the Khmer Rouge and the VietCong when the inustriatl and agricultural working class demanded too many rights. They've got lots and lots of principles...

Good. I would like to see all support for national lib movements vanish. That would be great. Yup, that's the goal of Communism, no states, no countries, a brotherhood of man, Imagine dat?

Callin' me a dreamer?

well, I'm not the only one...

I hope someday you'll join us....

and the world will be as one.

I guess it's safe to say that you're not an anarchist, I doubt that you're a communist, and I would peg ya as a Trot. Your politics suck and you're annoying as hell with the same redundant arguments that've been used for over 50 years. Yup. A Trot.

I hate to flame, but now you're just pissin' me off.

are vietnamese proles that much better off than thai ones? are they in a stronger position to self-organise? (i dunno, honest question, but it certainly isn't a given)

i'm happy jonny has referred to the article i linked. here's another piece of it:

"Everybody had to write about the war with revolutionary optimism so that more people would send their sons," said Vu Bao, an acclaimed novelist and short-story writer who served in the American war as a communications specialist. "When we went south, we saw a lot but kept it in our hearts. Nobody could really discuss the war then— though now everybody does, and they wonder how we could have sacrificed so many people. In the war, when we talked about how many died, we were told to write that they were wounded. But the night my own son went to the battlefield, I said to myself: ‘You have to write in a different way about this war.’ When your son goes to the field of death, you learn how precious human life can be. That changed my way of writing."

and another:

"However the Tonkin Gulf incident was sparked, it allowed Hanoi to portray the growing conflict as a foreign invasion, not the coldly calculated, ideologically motivated grab for the south that it was. Many in the north would have opposed a war waged solely against fellow Vietnamese. "We were killing blood brothers," Hoang Cam said, adding that he still suffers in retrospect. "That was the biggest tragedy of our revolution." "

but people can read the whole thing for themselves.

Jonny writes: "I do know that we as conscious workers have agency that doesn't disappear at any level of responsibility/power."

That's ridiculous. So any number of scumbag politicians should have working class agency because they grew up poor. By that logic, working class people who manage to borrow or save money to open up a business and start exploiting other people, don't lose their proletarian agency. With this perspective, I can see how you support the nationalists, even when they fight against the workers.

so you're a supporter of the DPRK then?

good, because he is in fact vietnamese, and lived through the events you so admire, somehow coming to a different conclusion about them. i guess he had false consciousness.

did stalin keep his class consciousness, after all he was raised in poverty? surely the whole point of class consciousness is an understanding of your own position in social relations and the power this gives you - so yeah, politicians and entrepreneurs from working class backgrounds are mos likely class conscious (of their new-found position) - they've pulled themselves up and sure as hell want to stay there.

So, are you a supporter of the DPRK then? is kim jung-il an anti-imperialist class conscious worker "with an understanding he has a job to do"? Help us out here, where do you draw the line? do you draw a line?

wtf are you on about? you're criteria for supporting something appears to be: opposition to america.

in order to understand where you're coming from, i'm wondering if and where you draw a line, and why. From your evasions and constant refusal to answer, i can only assume you're at least pretty soft on the DPRK and Stalin. they're not 'devils,' (which i'll think you'll find is the only baiting rhetoric on page), but quite obviously pretty shit. would you rather live in the DPRK than canada?

so where do you draw the line? if you don't there's no point discussing with you because you're obviously devoid of all critical faculties and represent the kind of leftist anti-americanism i thought was a right-wing caricature. DPRK? Stalin? Al Qaeda? The Unabomber? The 7/7 bombers? The axis powers in WWII?

who are "my guys", wtf are you on about? seriously answer some of the questions i've asked and i might have some clue where you're coming from. i mean, undoubtedly the US/UK have been consistently attacking the 7/7 bomber's "guys" (i.e. muslims (and others) in the middle-east), does that legitimate blowing up tube trains? you could clear this up with a simple answer that you don't approve of the 7/7 attacks ...

And as to this notion you're either with the US or whichever vicious gang of nationalists is opposing them reminds me of ... oh yeah, George Bush's "you're either with us, or you're with the terrorists," and i'm sure you're aware he's not much renowned as a thinker.

For example, leftists who support 'the Iraqi resistance' are forced to collapse many violently competing factions into a singular 'the resistance' in order to make it fit their binary world-view, which also leads to them overlooking the very class-based resistance they claim to be in favour of 'if it existed, but this is the real world.' For example the Basra Oil Union (now General Union of Oil Employees, iirc) organised itself as soon after the invasion, and struck against the Coalition re-hiring Ba'athist bosses (the supposed enemies remember, if this was actually a war between 'nations' not classes), they also threatened to go on armed strike, and successfully challenged Paul Bremmer's laws on wages and the like - this kind of class based action was equally against indigenous bosses as imperial ones, and although far from perfect represents a means of resistance which doesn't rely on either cross-class alliances, endless guerilla war or campaigns of sectarian terror - but most of the left who supported anything opted for the sexier armed islamism of Muqtada al-Sadr and co, because murderous fundamentalists making a play for state power are a good thing as long as they're 1000 miles away

so in other words, you're continuing to support any nationalist gang that fights america, whilst ignoring the alternative i gave (the basra oil workers). i therefore think it is completely justified to ask if there's a limit to this ... you support nuclear proliferation, so presumably that means Iran and North Korea are ok in your book. so what about the 7/7 bombers? IT'S VERY SIMPLE TO CLEAR THIS UP - how do you distinguish revolutionaries and terrorists, given as you support the Iraqi 'collateral damage' resistance? Do you support Hezbollah rocketing Israeli towns during the war last year?

and again, you appear to be trolling, i'm a communist andvocating working class internationalism, you're supporting (poor) nationalists seemingly without limit, how am i "red-baiting"? Furthermore, what liberals support proletarian internationalism? in other words, what the fuck are you on about?

You know Animal Farm is an analogue of the Russian Revolution yeah - you know, the 'workers organisation taking power on behalf of the workers'? Could you give me an example of some "workers' organisations that have taken power," without subsequently becoming the new managers of capital? and how is supporting bourgeois states - Chavez's description of Venezueala - not liberalism, but anarcho-communism is, despite seeking the destruction of the state/market pairing which is the central feature of liberalism since Hobbes?

You've previously name-checked the IRA as something you support, despite the fact members of revolutionary organisations in Northern Ireland consider them a gang of murderous nationalists, so how do you define 'workers organisation'? Your consistent refusal to give concrete examples or clarify your position with regard to groups who employ terrorism (i.e. targeting random workers/sectarian civilian killings) seems to suggest you won't condemn it - i mean if someone falsely assumed i supported, say Al Qaeda - which has happened through being anti-war - i'd just make clear that i don't support either Bush or Al Qaeda's terror bombing, it's not difficult. So two very simple questions which can dispel any misunderstandings i have of your position:

1. What are your criteria for a 'workers organisation' - does your 'proletarian internationalism' mean supporting nationalists?
2. Where do you draw the line wrt supporting 'anti-imperialists'; IRA, Al Qaeda, North Korea, and why?

Joseph K fully and totally agree with your defense of internationalism against jonnyflash's defense of state capitalism..
Jonnyflash it would be very helpful if you actually answered the questions the Joseph is asking you and stop throwing bucket fulls of red herring every where.
On the Viet Cong, far from being some brave defenders of socialism against the evils of US imperialism they represented the North Vietnamie's state and pursued an imperialist policy like any other set of imperialist gangsters. The invasion of Cambodia made that very clear.
If would be useful if you answered Joseph's question about the IRA. This bunch of nationalist gangsters are very popular with the supporters of State Capitalism. Funny who so-called revolutionaries are willing to give support to gangsters who terrorist the working class both protestant and catholic for decades and still do. And before you jump about shouting about supporting the other side, the Loyalist gangs belong to the bourgeoisie as the IRA do. The only difference being that the IRA go to the Catholic church and the Loyalist to a protestant one, but may be catholicism is more revolutionary than protestanism?

hanoi imperialist gangsters, funded by beijing imperialist gangsters, in a war with DC imperialist gangsters.
which side am i supposed to support again? oh that's right, none of them.

Newyawka, I am puzzled by your post. We are trying to defend internationalism against the nationalism of jonnyflash, why does that deserve sarcasm? Don't you agree with the defense of this proletarian principle against those attacking it and supporting capitalism?

sorry ernie you missed me. i'm agreeing with what you said. insofar as i was sarcastic, it was towards jonny. just cf. what i said above about the VC.

Newyawka I apologize for misconstruing what you said, I should have read the thread more thoroughly, no offensive meant.

no need to get Tetchy

also jonny - nobody in this discussion is a 'post-leftist' - the term leftist is used by communists (left-, libertarian and anarcho-) to describe those who would "manage other peoples struggles" (Gilles Dauvé), whereas 'post-leftism' is a peculiarly north american phenomenon that rejects the importance or even existence of class.