[Reader-list] are we forgetting something in our rage

[Jeebesh Bagchi]

dear All,

Somedays back I was going through books in Bookworm (in CP, Delhi). A tall,
 frail women from a working class background, with very clear diction in
 Hindustani was trying to understand the shelf arrangement. In conversations
 I learnt that she wanted to read about feminism and needed an introductory
 text, a text that introduces and stimulate her interest. We went through the
 books available and found a book or two. She was willing to spend maximum
 Rs. 600/- . We could only manage two books with that resource. She said that
 reading and working is tough and since libraries are closed in the evening
 she has to buy books. English books will take some time to finish and it
 will provide her enough resource to buy next round. Sadly I was unable to
 recommend her cheaper books or good translations or original work in Hindi.
 It is my lack of knowledge but also a certain invisibility of these books
 adds to the problem. On thinking further I would think that the problem is
 much deeper. Somewhere in our rage about `authoritarian` poltics we seem to
 overlook the simple matrix of the everyday. we forget sometimes, as alluded 
to by others on the list, that knowledge and conversations need to circulate 
and be available at very low resource base.
 
best
Jeebesh




We all seem to acknowledge that we are living in a very disturbing period.

Now no longer is there the framework of `inferiorised cultural difference`
 (like the racial politics of 19th C). The new framework is a fetishised
 discources of identity around ` irreconcilable cultural differences`.
 Increasingly accepted norm is becoming `lets live our lives seperately`. We
 all seem to recognise certain echos of earlier historical times (remember
 PolPot?). The construction of `we` & `our` and `them` and `theirs` seems to
 have engulfed more and more of thinking and speech.

But I am sure we will be able to interpret and act within this milieu with a
different language and imagination. Let's re-new the ideas of `commons'.
Let's find new language that talks to our nomadic selves, our complicated
and mulitple inheritance routes, histories and cultures of hospitality
 towards strangers. We need a new interpretative framework to discover and
 invent solidarities and recognitions.

I am enclosing few paragraphs from an article that I find very illuminating
in cautioning us about familiar traps of thinking about fascism and
anti-fascism. The full text is very insightful. If time permits please do go
over it.

best
Jeebesh
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FASCISM / ANTIFASCISM by Jean Barrot
http://www.spunk.org/texts/antifasc/sp000833.htm

.....Fascism has the following  characteristics:
1) it is born in the street;
2) it stirs up disorder  while preaching order;
3) it is a movement of obsolete middle classes  ending in their more or less
 violent destruction; and 4) it regenerates  from outside the traditional
 State which is incapable of resolving the  capitalist crisis......

......With World War II, the mythology of Fascism was enriched by a new
 element. This conflict was the necessary solution to problems both  economic
 (crash of 1929) and social (unruly working class which,  although
 non-revolutionary, had to be disciplined). World War II could  be depicted
 as a war against totalitarianism in the form of fascism.  This
 interpretation has endured, and the constant recall by the victors  of 1945
 of the Nazi atrocities serves to justify the war by giving it  the character
 of a humanitarian crusade. Everything, even the atomic  bomb, could be
 justified against such a barbarous enemy. This  justification is, however,
 no more credible than the demagogy of the  Nazis, who claimed to struggle
 against capitalism and Western  plutocracy. The "democratic" forces included
 in their ranks a State as  totalitarian and bloody as Hitler's Germany:
 Stalin's Soviet Union, with  its penal code prescribing the death penalty
 from the age of twelve.  Everyone knows as well that the Allies resorted to
 similar methods of  terror and extermination whenever they saw the need
 (strategic bombing  etc.). The West waited until the Cold War to denounce
 the Soviet camps.  But each capitalist country has had to deal with its own
 specific  problems, Great Britain had no Algerian war to cope with, but the
 partition of India claimed millions of victims. The USA never had to
 organize concentration camps in order to silence its workers and dispose  of
 surplus petits bourgeois, but it found its own colonial war in  Vietnam. As
 for the Soviet Union, with its Gulag which is today  denounced the world
 over, it was content to concentrate into a few  decades the horrors spread
 out over several centuries in the older  capitalist countries, also
 resulting in millions of victims just in the  treatment of the Blacks
 alone.....

The development of Capital carries with  it certain consequences, of which
 the main ones are: 1) domination over  the working class, involving the
 destruction, gentle or otherwise, of  the revolutionary movement; 2)
 competition with other national Capitals,  resulting in war. When power is
 held by the "workers'" parties, only one  thing is altered: workerist
 demagogy will be more conspicuous, but the  workers will not be spared the
 most severe repression when this becomes  necessary. The triumph of Capital
 is never as total as when the workers  mobilize themselves on its behalf in
 search of a "better life".

In order to protect us from the excesses of Capital, antifascism as a  matter
 of course invokes the intervention of the State. Paradoxically,  antifascism
 becomes the champion of a strong State; For example, the PCF  asks us: "What
 kind of State is necessary in France today?... Is our  State stable and
 strong, as the President of the Republic claims? No, it  is weak, it is
 impotent to pull the country out of the social and  political crisis in
 which it is mired. In fact it is encouraging  disorder." (6)

Both dictatorship and democracy propose to strengthen the State the  former
 as a matter of principle, the latter in order to protect us -  ending up in
 the same result. Both are working towards the same goal -  totalitarianism.
 In both cases it is a matter of making everyone  participate in society:
 "from the top down" For the dictators, "from the  bottom up" for the
 democrats.........

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