Re:SWP & Oct. 6

["Fred Feldman" <ffeldman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Well, fortunately or unfortunately, I have some information about the
question David asked so I feel duty bound to give it.

The SWP was present at the October 6 demonstration in New York City.  They
had a literature table staffed by three or four people.  The table, like
many other literature tables at the demonstration, was very busy all day.

However, I saw no mention of this protest in the Militant, nor has there
been any mention of any recent protest against the war except from a couple
of local actions around Palestine and Vieques -- actions which the party, as
I go to press, still supports.  And I have seen no mention of the protest of
hundreds of thousands in Britain or the million and a half in Italy.

Workers in factories or at plant gates or in working class neighborhoods
where the Militant is sold will basically not find out from this source that
anyone is fighting the war against Iraq besides the Militant and the SWP.
To my recollection, the paper has not reprinted any of the comments of Fidel
Castro or Cuban Foreign Minister Roque about the war.

I could have missed things.  I have read the paper for forty years but not
always cover to cover and less so now.

The political assessment behind this was stated by National Secretary Jack
Barnes a few weeks ago.  He proclaimed something like, we are not building a
movement to end a war, but engaging in the years of hard struggle to build a
revolutionary leadership.

This phrase caught my attention because it was the first time in my forty
years of contact with the party that I had known a SWP spokesperson to
counterpose building the revolutionary party to building protests against
particular imperialist wars.

Since then, there have been several references to Lenin's correct statement
against Kautsky and others, who set aside revolutionary struggle for the
duration of World War I in favor of the fight for "peace," that
revolutionists do not have a revolutionary policy for peacetime and a
pacifist policy for wartime.  As I understand it, present thinking is that
Lenin's precept requires the SWP to carry out an undifferentiated communist
campaign against imperialism and for communism, without tactical adjustments
to such things as antiwar protests.

It is also suggested that involvement in antiwar protests would be a
violation of principle, since all such protests today prominently include
expressions of pacifist sentiments, illusions in the United Nations (well, I
certainly think they're illusions), and other things that communists have
disagreements with.

And the argument is made in the paper by both Barnes and National Committee
member Mary-Alice Waters that strikes are the most important expression of
antiwar protest since they are the cells of the future anticapitalist
revolution that will put an end to war.

Of course, how one prioritizes strikes and antiwar protests -- it would be
pretty bizarre for a revolutionary organization based among industrial
workers to not give strikes a high priority -- does not explain the decision
to abstain from such protests, take a hostile stance toward them, or
obstruct readers of the MIlitant from learning about them.

I agree with David that the presence of the SWP in antiwar demonstrations
would be welcome, given  the trade union, antiwar, and other experience that
party members have.

The absence of SWP literature tables is a loss, too, since radicalizing
youth and others who are trying to learn how to fight would benefit from
much of this literature.  For instance, I would very much recommend Fred
Halstead's Out Now! and Farrell Dobbs' Teamster Bureaucracy to learn about a
working-class approach to the fight against imperialist wars.

The SWP is having a public meeting in New York on November 2 at Columbia
University where the present phase of the party's course will no doubt be
explained further and perhaps more accurately.  (My comments are not the
product of research.)  Barnes and Waters will be among the speakers.

So the news is that the SWP is, at least for now, turning decisively away
from antiwar protests and that there is nothing that anyone can do about it.

So I  plan to waste no time debating these arguments, which are not being
made for the first time and didn't originate with Jack Barnes or the SWP,
and to go about my work.  I recommend that others do the same. There is a
lot to do.
Fred Feldman


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