Draper on organising for socialism

["Ozleft" <ozleft@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

(Was Re: Shane Hopkinson post of Peter Boyle reformatted)

Alan Bradley's response reposted from Green Left Weekly list

I'm afraid Louis' response is mainly a product of the specific bats in his
belfry.

He tends to project his experience in the US SWP onto every other group in
the world.

The problem with that is, of course, that there are a whole host of other
party-building experiences out there, in a whole bunch of countries. It's
possible to learn quite a bit from them, and to consider all kinds of
interesting possibilities.

Louis seems to assume that the DSP is fixated upon the particular history of
the US SWP, apparently because they haven't denounced it as all being
worthless, and because it operates as a team that actually makes decisions
and seeks to carry them out (ie, is democratic centralist). This isn't true,
and is in fact a reflection of Louis' own fixation on the US SWP!

His broader analysis of "Zinovievism" isn't much broader. It actually seems
to be based almost entirely upon the experience of the CPUSA. It seems to be
conspicuously short on consideration of other parties, such as, for example,
the PCI, or the PCF, and other such (at times) relatively large Communist
Parties. Instead, he draws his analysis from the dwarfish US party, and from
it's even smaller Trotskyist offshoot, plus, of course, the generally absurd
history of British Trotskyism.

It doesn't acknowledge the existence of influential left parties in
countries like the Philippines, India, Pakistan, Indonesia... In short, it's
a sectarian stick to beat the actually existing US left with.

These are just my off the cuff impressions. I will do a proper analysis of
his post later.

Alan Bradley



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