what May Day means to me

[tagryn]

(from American Digest)

The refusal to subject Stalinism to Marxist analysis is to deny the millions who died under its aegis, their voices lost forever in the silence of the state. - Louis Althusser
(paraphrased, don't have the text with me at the moment)

Comments

[erikred.livejournal.com]

Agreed that the Soviet Union was rotten to the core, just wanted to make sure you knew the origins of May Day.

[tagryn]

Yes, we need to remember the Haymarket Riots & what the labor movement has done for workers, no question. Insofar as May Day has been hijacked by totalitarian regimes to maintain the facade of still being revolutionary representatives of The Worker, rather than what they really are, though, it isn't a particularly welcome holiday in my view.

Wouldn't limit it to just the Soviets - the tendency to liquidate those who are in the way of The Utopian State seems to be a nasty historical characteristic of communistic states worldwide - but that's another day's essay. 8)

[erikred.livejournal.com]

Man, tell me about it. And these yahoos still give MFN to the PRC year after year.

I tell you truthfully, I wouldn't be as disturbed by the War on Terror if I didn't know that we're ignoring the totalitarian elephant in the middle of the room.

[tagryn]

Eric - you sure you linked to the right article? I don't consider the Chinese government "ordinating" another "bishop" (ahem) to be a Big Picture issue, unless its just the most recent example of persecution of religion in China. They're using the state-controlled church to try to leverage the Vatican on Taiwan & to attempt to limit the Catholic Church's influence in China.

MFC for PRC: don't we as a nation have a long-standing history of looking the other way with dictatorships as long as they're willing to 'play ball'/do business with us? Sad to say, but realistically we'd probably still be friendly with Saddam if he hadn't gotten greedy and went after the Kuwaiti oil. Foreign policy is the realm of hypocrites, and clean hands isn't a characteristic of diplomats.

Which doesn't make it any more smart, right, or moral, or trying to excuse it, just saying that's how it usually operates as far as I can tell.

[erikred.livejournal.com]

I linked to the right article. The PRC is not just leveraging the Vatican; they're working hard to make all religion a tool of the state, and nothing more. Cf. the long, sad history of their involvement in the selection of the Panchen Lama.

We do have a long history of turning a blind eye to the gross abuses of power when it serves our business interests (at least in the short term), and I understand that this can be productive, but what I'm seeing in China is the opposite: we're turning a blind eye in the hopes that doing business will mellow them out and bring them over to Democracy, while they're using the resources we're investing to shore up their stranglehold on power.

It's ironic that revocation of MFN for the PRC is one of the only issues in the GOP platform that I happen to agree with, and yet a GOP Pres. and Congress seem content to ignore it.

Blah, sorry, this is a sore point for me.