Forwarded from Lou Paulsen

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

(Lou Paulsen posted this from a non-subbed address)

From: Julio Fernández Baraibar <julfb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>I can only admire the extraordinary way that Lou Paulsen used to put in
>question what seemed to be an unanimous point of view against the coup in
>Fiji.
>
>His message opened a very rich discussion [...]

I appreciate a compliment as much as anyone :-) and I agree that our
discussion of Fiji has been very valuable (see note below).  But it's not
the work of any individual person.  Really, it's an example of what Mao said
about "correct ideas" growing out of the struggle.  I would probably never
have been motivated to investigate the issue more closely if I were not
subscribed to this list and exposed to GLW's posts.  The whole discussion
very much validates the whole concept of the list and Lou Proyect's vision
as moderator.  Furthermore, it shows what it's possible to do with the
Internet.  Suppose this were happening in 1985?  There'd be absolutely no
way we could do what we did.  Now we have access to World Bank reports, back
issues of GLW, thousands of articles from the Fiji press, academic articles
and books on line, and so on.  I certainly never went near a library all
week - it was just point and click.  The Maori News site collected a lot of
this stuff.  Lou Proyect and especially Yoshie posted tons of links to
important documents.  And probably at least a dozen other people
participated in the discussion.  And I stress that even though I disagree
with Norm and Alan's conclusions, we couldn't have had this discussion
without them.

Furthermore, let me take this opportunity to say that although I have been
mentally very involved with the Fiji discussion, I have certainly been
reading the extremely valuable things that Yoshie, Abu Nasr, and our
extraordinary new member from Turkey, Mine, have been posting in their
discussion of the interrelation of feminism, nationalism, religion, and
anti-imperialism.   I really can't come up with the right words to say that
it's very very very very very good and important.


--------

Now as to Mark Jones!  Somehow he has gotten a "bee in his bonnet" (for
members outside the English tradition, this idiom means that he is excited
and impatient) and is impatient for us all to 'do something' rather than
'merely' write on e-lists.  Interestingly, this is parallel to what Norm
Dixon wrote:

>Lou believes we should be analysing the Fiji events -- and so we should.
>But more immediately we should be taking action to support the
>democratic and anti-chauvinist struggle of the multiracial Fiji working
>class. If we sit on our hands, theorising about why it is so
>``unprinicpled'' to support the FTUC's calls,  [...]

Norm thinks that it's important for us to get busy organizing for sanctions
right now.   Mark thinks that it's important for us to get busy doing party
organizing right now.  I write as a party activist myself, in a party which
has a decent record of activity, and my position is that this kind of
theoretical discussion and struggle is a invaluable part of the process of
organizing and action.  If we don't have this discussion, then we have
abandoned our role as Marxists because we are going to be trying to lead but
we won't have a vision of in what direction we should be leading.  My own
next step is to try and summarize this discussion in an article for our
paper/website, and then/simultaneously we can go on to organizing against
sanctions.

Lou Paulsen
member
WWP, Chicago


Louis Proyect

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