Re: swp

[Louis N Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, 23 Feb 1996, James Miller wrote:

> people who were there at the time. I don't think
> a debate can be carried on satisfactorily by
> referring to specific past events that are part
> of one person's unique experience. Rather, if we
> would like to clarify our differences, it would
> be better to rely on the public record of the
> general course of political development.
>

Louis: You want to talk about "public record", then you'll have to come
up with a better example than Mary-Alice Water's puff-piece on Che Guevara.
Everybody is for Che Guevara. Everybody is for Nelson Mandela. But this
is not politics, is it?

Why not take a crack at this:

"Our turn is putting us where we must be to apply our strategy in
light of these changing conditions. That's where we are winning influence
for our ideas, educating ourselves and our co-workers, taking on our
political opponents. The industrial workplaces and unions are our arena to
build support for the fight against nuclear power and weapons, for
ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment, against racial discrimination,
and around the other major political issues confronting our
class. This is the central arena for all our party campaigns."

This sums up the orientation of the SWP for a ten year period or so and
continues to remain so despite minor tactical changes. This is an ultraleft
workerist fantasy. When Barnes said in the late 1970s that the fight against
nuclear power, for the ERA, against racism would be conducted in the
*industrial unions*, he was simply dreaming. He literally meant that the
coal-miners, steel-workers, etc. would be spearheading all these fights.
But politics is not about wishes, is it?

Struggles around these issues and others did take place, but not in the
industrial unions. When struggles did take place elsewhere such as the
campuses or in white-collar unions like AFSCME, the SWP was absent. That
is the main reason the group has shrunk from between 2 to 3000 to less
than 500. People have voted with their feet.




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