Ultra lefts, full throttle (was Re: Final thoughts on the Nader campaign)

["Nestor Miguel Gorojovsky" <Gorojovsky@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

En relación a Final thoughts on the Nader campaign,
el 14 Jul 00, a las 20:11, Louis Proyect dijo:

>  American capitalism has enormous resilience--based as it is
> on a vulturistic hold over the Third World. It has the capacity to
> work its way through one crisis after another. Given this reality,
> Marxist politics must involve detours and flanking tactics. This is
> something that any self-respecting ultraleft finds impossible, their
> main slogan being "March, march--full speed ahead!" Of course, it
> never bothers them if no army is following them. In some cases, some
> of the extreme purists feel compromised if they do have a following,
> even of just a couple dozen. What were they doing wrong?

Great politics in a nutshell. Now, a side comment. The problem with
ultraleftism is not only that they lack followers, but that when they
get some following, when they convince a concrete fraction of the
working class to ride their train, they lead the train to a
catastrophe. And when the catastrophe is imminent or takes place,
they jump out from the engine (or simply stand still, in amazement,
staring from behind the crystals of the cabin overlooking the tracks)
and the whole mob of followers is taken to disaster.

They are spared the pains, or at least they have a capacity to
recover that their "believers" absolutely lack, and then they begin
anew somewhere else. This has always been their political meaning.

Established classes do know this very well. Wasn't it Churchill who
made a stinging remark on the reasonability of being socialist when
one is in her / his 20s, and conservative when one is in her / his
40s. The remark is an expression of wisdom from the exploiters, which
is that ultralefts are actually a part of their group. I am not one
to blame people for their social origin, but it is very meaningful
that the leadership of the most fervent ultraleft Trotskyist group in
Argentina, the Partido Obrero, was recruited among the children of
managers of imperialist concerns. Something similar happened with the
ultraleft leadership in Córdoba during the late 60s, where fervent
child-eating Marxist revolutionaries were bred in the quarter of
Cerro de las Rosas, a newly established (by then) area of ascending
petty bourgeoisie and managerial layers in the imperialist factories
of the town.

Back to a personal collection, each time I listen to these "great
organizers of defeats" (strange, isn't it, that the indictment of
Trotsky against Stalin can be so well applied to these self-appointed
Trotskyists?) give their high-sounding discourse, I recall the sullen
and darkened faces of the workers at the Canale factory, a quarter of
mile off my house, after they were defeated all over the line during
a struggle that was led by these ultraleft. Defeated people, I mean,
defeated working class, discouraged, fired, scorched by a destructive
tactics, who were almost begging for readmission in the plant.

Their leaders, petty bourgeois ultraleftists (if I am not wrong, they
belonged to the Partido Socialista de los Trabajadores of Moreno)
were already somewhere else.
Néstor Miguel Gorojovsky
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