Re: swp, Dumain, etc.

[Bradley Mayer <concrete@xxxxxxxxx>]

Carlos:

>    I'm extremely impressed by Ralph Dumain's essay about American
>    "State of Mind" which he wrote in answering somebody's else
>    posting about the SWP.
>
>    Under the excuse of answering that post, he delivered a brilliant
>    and contundent argument in favor of American intellectual cynicism.
>    I have to admit: it is hard to crack (have an impenetrable logic)
>    and shows how much Marxism has against in order to succeed in real
>    life (Ralph Dumain is almost an archetypical character of the
>    American Urban scene.
>
>    It is very painful.
>
>    Comradely,
>    Carlos

Carlos has put his finger on a syndrome that afflicts some of the best
elements both on this l*st and throughout the "would-be" revolutionary
Marxist movement in the U.S.  He has the advantage of someone from the
"outside" who sees clearly the tangled web we have woven for ourselves.
This also gives him the luxury to feel "pain and sorrow" for the fate of
such North Americans. But as one of those North Americans for whom this
fate - the most crucial part of which still remains to be determined in
the future - has been a living daily reality, such feelings are not a
luxury, but a burden.  I cannot feel pain, sorrow or pity for brilliant
minds and literary acumen - I only feel great impatience.

I prefer the R. Dumain who recently wrote on the relation of Marx to
Feuerbach in the supersession of Hegelian idealism.  Far from convoluted
theoreticisms, these passages cast by analogy a clarifying light on our
own condition in the present period.  I have for some time believed that
in our own time we confront theoretical and practical tasks much like
those which confronted Marx and Engels in the aftermath of the
theoretical failure of Hegelianism and the practical failure of the 1848
revolutions.  We, like they, have the formidable task of sweeping away
layer after layer of rubbish piled up over decades.  This includes a
whole subset of garbage which has paraded under the banner of "Marxism":
Stalinism, Maoism, Althusser, varieties of New Leftism, neo-Proudhonian
market socialism, postmodernism and social democracy. Atop this rests
certain failures of "Trotskyism" since the postwar: Mandel, the American
SWP, the MAS in Argentina, etc., and the resultant sectarian legacy.

So it's rather what Marx must have saw when he scanned the horizon of
"German philosophy, French socialism, and English political economy" - an
endless sea of confusion.  But Marx overcame these confusions, and we can
too, even if we have to perform collectively what Marx appeared to
accomplish individually.  There is reason to hope: Stalinism has largely
collapsed, leaving behind only the little turds that blight this l*st; Social
Democracy, abandoning all pretense to socialism, has largely left the
field. A broad horizon has opened before us, with good prospcts both for the
reconstruction of Marxist theory and revolutionary intervention in the
class struggle - if only we would bind up our wounds and move on.

                        With pitiless comradship,
                        Brad Mayer


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