Re: marxism-digest V1 #5644

["Richard Harris" <rhh1@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> Date: Sun, 30 Mar 2003 12:15:11 -0800
> From: "Walter Lippmann" <walterlx@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Subject: How to approach the troops?
>
> Excuse me, Richard, but how would YOU
> appeal to the troops? What would you be
> saying to the troops right now as they're
> being killed thanks to Bush and Blair?
>
> Date: Sun, 30 Mar 2003 15:27:19 -0500
> From: "lvnadal" <lvnadal@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Subject: Re: How to approach the troops?

> I might just appeal with the exact words Comrade Lippman supplied:
> "Hey, you're being killed thanks to Bush and Blair."  I might say "Hey,
> you're being paid to fuck over people more fucked over than yourself .
> That's democracy."  I might say "Hey, ask your captain what his folks do
or
> did for a living, compare it to what yours do, and if you take an Iraqi
> prisoner, ask him what he or his folks do, see which income group you're
> closer to."   I know I would say "Reduce your profile.  Keep your weapon
> clean.  And don't get yourself fucked up on behalf of Cheney's severance
> settlement."  I know I would say, "You think these people want you here?"
>
> Date: Sun, 30 Mar 2003 12:48:27 -0800
> From: "Walter Lippmann" <walterlx@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Subject: Re: How to approach the troops?
>
> The best response is to quietly, calmly,
> present people with facts, figures and
> articles from the Wall Street Journal
> and the Financial Times and such to
> show them it's not our leftist opinion,
> but these opinions are fact-based.
>
The Comrade's reply to Walter is exactly right.

In my original posting I also made the point that the very question "how
would YOU appeal to the troops?" is quite abstract.  It is not a question
about how to conduct the day to day struggle against the war.  For Comrade
Kinkle, how to approach individual soldiers has been a practical problem.
Many comrades, Walter and others, have offered useful advice.  I suggest
this is rare.

At the present stage of the struggle, this one-on-one occasional contact
with soldiers is not going to crack the war open.  To my mind, the two
central issues are i) how to relate to the broader anti-war movements that
have sprung up around us so that we offer a solid and strong political
intervention ii) how to relate to the organised working class, which, in my
part of the world, has not stirred (the UK fire-fighters have even called
off a strike so that they do not suffer the opprobrium of putting pressure
on the Army - the Army was being used to strike break.  Because of the war,
their own defensive strike is defeated due to their unwillingness to defend
themselves.)

Certainly i) has been tackled on this list.

By the way, I want to thank comrades who have posted valuable factual
information to the list.  I have used much of the material in producing
leaflets, broadsheets, posters & so on in my town.  "quietly, calmly,
present people with facts, figures and articles from the Wall Street Journal
and the Financial Times" is what I can do and there is public resonance to
that.  Or to amend Walter, cited above, it is not 'these' opinions that are
fact based.  The totality of our leftist opinion is fact based, it is the
truth about how the world works and, like any form of knowledge, is properly
open to close scrutiny and testing against the reality of the world.
Marxism is not a moral orientation, nor is it just the view we get from our
spot in it (but we do see it like that.)  It is how the world is - and this
war rawly exposes the domination of people and things that is the heart of
class society, its economy and political systems.

Forward!

Richard
Canterbury, Kent.