Re: ANSWER's office space, etc.

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

LouPaulsen wrote:

> I mean, REALLY.  If ANSWER had its own office, you believe that Gitlin
> wouldn't have written his article, and Henwood's list wouldn't have been
> converted into the chuck0/seay/newman list for griping about ANSWER and
> about WWP, and David Horowitz wouldn't have written an article entitled
> "100,000 COMMUNISTS MARCH ON WASHINGTON", and Corn wouldn't have written his
> article which should be entitled "100,000 Dupes of Communists march on
> Washington"?  All of this would have been forestalled if ANSWER had ITS OWN
> OFFICE SPACE?
You are right. Finding an separate office space for ANSWER would not
have ended the red-baiting. But why give your opponents an easy opening?
You don't seem to have any grasp of public relations.

> 2) In the second place, ANSWER doesn't share office space with WWP.  ANSWER
> shares office space with the IAC.
That's exactly what I said, Lou.

Let me cut to the chase, however. Back in the late 1980s I was on the
steering committee of the New York Nicaragua Network that I helped to
found. This was the umbrella group for all the Sister Cities projects,
the construction brigades, Tecnica, etc. Before getting involved with
Nicaragua solidarity, I was a member of CISPES for 4 years or so. This
was the main solidarity organization for the FMLN in the USA. Somewhere
along the line--I can't remember exactly when--the Workers World Party
organized a demonstration in Washington against intervention in Central
America under the auspices of the Peoples Antiwar Mobilization, a
precursor to IAC. My attitude at the time was the same as it is today. I
was ambivalent. On one hand, I was pleased that somebody had gone
through the effort to secure a march permit, procure buses, etc. On the
other hand, I said to myself who the fuck are these people who are going
over the heads of the Central American solidarity movement. Nobody from
WWP was involved with CISPES, nor with the Nicaragua network in NYC.
This was not only a case of WWP acting unilaterally, but completely
ignoring a powerful grass-roots movement. You might argue that no such
grass-roots movement existed with respect to Iraq, but this was not the
case in with Nicaragua and El Salvador.

The one thing I learned from doing Central American solidarity work is
that leadership is not imposed from above. The FMLN--a true
coalition--only came into existence when the El Salvador left learned
that no single faction had the inside track on making a revolution. Of
course, there are sectarians who argue that the Salvadoran left lost
because it failed to construct a "true vanguard", but as I have stated
here many times before sometimes your opponent is better-armed and
better-financed to the point of making victory a near impossibility.
Nevertheless, it is important to struggle.

You must be aware that there is an ongoing critique of sectarianism on
this list. Nobody is spared, not even the WWP. We are ruthless critics
of unilateralism, bureaucracy, elitism and self-aggrandizement. Nobody
here would gainsay the importance of the CPUSA in mounting tireless
campaigns in support of civil rights during the 1930s and 40s. But by
the same token, the record of the CPUSA is tarnished by its refusal to
listen to its critics. During WWII, it neglected the civil rights
struggle because it saw the struggle against fascism as paramount.
Finally, this came back to haunt them when black nationalists like
Harold Cruise accused them--not fairly--of white racism.

The problem with the WWP is that it is a self-designated vanguard. In
every instance I can think of, including the SWP in the Vietnam antiwar
movement, this has led to a bulldozer approach to organizing. When
people get in the way, they are pushed aside as petty-bourgeois. This is
not just your approach. You can find it with the RCP who is building
NION in the same fucked-up way that you have built your own wholly owned
subsidiaries.

This "coalition-building" methodology has been around forever. The CPUSA
excelled in this, always lining up their own versions of Ramsey Clark.
This is not to say that it can't work. In all politics, including
revolutionary politics, muscle goes a long way. However, if you think
that a revolution can be made in this fashion, you are deluding
yourself. There will come a time when the resistance of the American
people to a never-ending diet of war, austerity, racism and repression
will provoke a reaction that has not been seen since the 1930s. When
that time comes, the organizational form that can move this struggle in
an anti-capitalist direction will look like nothing we've ever seen.
Basically, American socialism will have to be reinvented. My advice to
you is to begin preparing politically for this stormy future. Any
attempts to superimpose the bureaucratic models of the past are doomed
to failure.

--

Louis Proyect
www.marxmail.org




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