re Party Building

["Shane Hopkinson" <s.hopkinson@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi All

It gets a bit hard following these lists but earlier this week
on this list I mentioned Hal Drapers ideas and got some good
feedback from Tom and others.

Interestingly on the Greenleft list Peter Boyle made the 
following comment:

> it will be interesting to see if Bob Gould's re-discovered interest 
> in Lenin leads him to recognise Hal Draper's liberal organisational 
> schema for socialist organisation in "Toward a New Beginning – On 
> Another Road: The Alternative to the Micro-Sect" 
> <http://www.marxists.org/archive/draper/works/1971/alt/index.htm> is 
> based on a total distortion of the Bolshevik experience.>>

Since Peter has known Bob forever I wonder why he thinks Bob might 
subscribe to Draper.  Given that Bob is a very orthodox Trotskyist 
who has raised some minor doubts about the Soviet experience it 
seems odd to impute Draperite views to him. 

In any case though - I have been trying to debate Draper's ideas 
with the DSP for ages - I wrote a report in the internal bulletin 
"The Activist" before I left but no-one in the party responded - 
now we are told out of the blue -  that its a 'total distortion' 
of Leninism and an accomodation to liberalism. I am anxious to
hear the arguments for both sides. 

I thought others on this list might also be interested given the 
earlier postings. 

Shane


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