Re: AUT: ANSWER and the liberals

[Chris Wright <cwright@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Scott,
>
> Chris, your continued efforts to belittle the anti-war
> movement are difficult to understand, given the
> obvious importance of this movement and its
> spectacular growth in your aprt of the world. First
> you claimed that attempts to organise mass anti-war
> marches would come to nothing, in the States at least.
> Even after the 100,000-strong march on Washington DC
> last year you denied that the anti-war moveemnt could
> be called a movement. Now the movement has become so
> large that you cannot deny its existence you try to
> write it off as immune to influence from
> revolutionaries (post of a few days ago) and even
> mostly bourgeois:

You confuse issues again.  I did not say anything about the amount of
opposition to the war.  I was referring to the state of the coalitions
and especially in Chicago.

Also, I wonder what exactly we are looking at qualitatively.  I prefer
to err on the side of caution at the moment.  Compared to the Vietnam
anti-war movement, these have certainly been large demonstrations, but
the daily, on-the-ground activity is nothing on the scale of the 60's.
That was 'a movement' (in fact, several movements), this is some inkling
of a movement.

Now, I think that it is phenomenal that we are seeing this kind of
response already.  It bodes well and I am much more enthusiastic than I
was 4 months ago.  But I am not ready to confuse the very barest
beginnings of something with an actual movement.  Demonstrations, even
big ones, do not a movement make.  IMO, you have a very narrow notion of
what a social movement entails.  And right now, these beginnings are
benefitting, IMO, from the anti-globalization protests and that
activity, but that also had not yet found a way to reach beyond a
certain layer.  Given that this war is intimately connected with
globalization and its crisis, this could be an opportunity for the
anti-capitalism of a section of the anti-globalization struggles to meet
more deeply with the anti-war sentiments of an increasing section of the
workers the anti-globalization protests never reached in the US.

However, I do not now and did not then think that people were 'immune'
to the influence of revolutionaries.  I hope they are, if by
revolutionaries you mean WWP, the SWP, the ISO, the RCP and the rest of
the capitalist Left.  The organizations/people you call revolutionary I
do not.

I think that we can have an influence, that we can play a crucial role
in this, but you do not seem willing to take up the possibility that
your way is not the only way.  So anything other than Leninist tactics
are treated as a refusal to engage with people, which I see as nonsense.

Also, this discussion with Neil has been about what kind of
organizational responsibilities and possibilities we have.  IMO, it is
not sitting in coalitions arguing with wankers (not every coalition is
that way, but in Chicago it is a bunch of Leftists of one or another
degree, Christian reformers, and Left Democrats.)

Even so, as I have said repeatedly, if one is going to work within one
of these coalitions, then it is necessary to have concrete alternative
activities and not just arguments over slogans.  Arguing over slogans
with no alternative activity to propose ends up in nothing but power
struggles over coalitions that alienate the few non-activist members.
Been there, done that.

> >To challenge the bourgeois organizations, indeed?
> >But how? To try to recruit?  To try and sit in
> >coalitions mostly only attended
> by these people?  Or to do something different?
>
> Are you seriously suggesting that most of the people
> active in anti-war coalitions like ANSWER and the Stop
> the War Coalition - the two coalitions being discussed
> in this thread - are 'bourgeois'? What sort of
> methodology is giving you this analysis? Surely it is
> time that you admitted that the anti-war movement
> contains very large numbers of workers, both organised
> and unorganised, and that ANSWER and its ilk must be
> engaged in a serious and non-sectarian (if undoubtedly
> critical) way, rater than derided or dismissed.

OMG, how silly.  Yes, Scott, I am suggesting that the anti-war
coalitions are composed mostly of members of the capitalist class.  Boy
howdy, you sure are a sharpie!

As for the rest, I have been repeating, ad nauseum, that an alternative
activity is necessary, rather than trying to beat ANSWER at its own
game.  They have funding and they can organize busses and they can run a
front.  Their politics are for shit, but a critique of those politics
requires an alternate framework of action, not fighting over control of
this or that coalition.  IMO, better to start a NWBTCW coalition on a
clear basis and figure out some basic activities to do, given the state
of the coalitions in Chicago.  Elsewhere, the situation, and therefore
the activity, will be different.

I cannot give you the abstract, patented answer you seem to want because
there isn't one.

Cheers,
Chris



     --- from list aut-op-sy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---