[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]
6564: Starting from scratch: Simidor responds to his critics
From: karioka9@cs.com
"One of the enduring characteristics of radicalism has precisely been that it
refuses to choose between two equally distasteful alternatives, that it
refuses to choose between cholera and the pest." (Lewis Coser)
This is my honest answer to Florestal and Dorce who seem rather alarmed by my
apparent propensity toward bloodshed. I too share their aspiration for
stability within a framework of democracy and human growth. I just don't
think this is where Haiti is being led right now. Not necessarily because
Aristide is evil (on some level I rather think he still means well), but
because Haiti is what it is, i.e. a desperately poor and abjectly dependent
country; because imperialism is what it is, i.e. a predatory world system
grabbing Haiti by the throat; and because Aristide and his Lavalas party are
what they are, i.e. a populist front condemned to sacrifice its followers on
the altar of imperialism and of an execrable comprador bourgeoisie. What's
true for Lavalas is also true for the so-called opposition. What we see
brilliantly exposed today is the inability of the system to reform itself.
Meanwhile, the country is burrowing deeper into the shit hole. So why not
indeed turn the table and restart from scratch?
For some people, this may sound foolhardy and hopelessly dogmatic. That
cannot be helped. Chamberlain, my newfound ally, will likely part company
with me with much fanfare on this very count. But the fact remains that the
masses of people, driven by desperation and hunger, will reach for anything
that promises relief: bourgeois democracy and US benevolence one day, Lavalas
populism today, even the return to the "golden days" of Duvalierism tomorrow!
But sooner or later, the people will realize who their class enemies are.
Then another "koupe tèt boule kay," another day of reckoning will come,
leaving behind "rien que du propre, du bien lavé..."
Will there be a revolution in Haiti in the foreseeable future? I fervently
hope so. Where I will be when the revolution done come is nobody's business,
and I will not be provoked on that subject by petty provocations from Lavalas
sycophants. But am I licking my chops waiting for all hell to break loose?
Not really. Revolution is bloodshed (Malcolm X said that), and usually very
messy. And the great masses of people, who usually pay the bloody price of
any revolutionary upsurge, will generally try everything else before
resorting to that last resort. Or to quote Marx just this once on this list:
"Proletarian revolutions criticize themselves constantly, interrupt
themselves continually in their own course, come back to the apparently
accomplished in order to begin afresh, deride with unmerciful thoroughness
the inadequacies, weaknesses, and paltriness of their first attempts, seem to
throw down their adversary only in order that he may draw new strength from
the earth and rise again, more gigantic, before them, recoil ever and anon
from the indefinite prodigiousness of their own aims, until a situation has
been created which makes all turning back impossible, and the conditions
themselves cry out:
Hic Rhodus, hic salta!
Here is the rose, here dance!"
Daniel Simidor