RE: [Marxism] RE: Communist tasks

["Walter Lippmann" <walterlx@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Tony Abdo, writes of what he describes as a "tendency of
retreat from previously held positions", after noting that
the old SWP had what he refers to as "defects" and "strong
points". Retreating from bad old positions, once they are
understood as such, is wisdom. I continue to agree that the
old SWP had "strong points", and even retains some strong
point TODAY in 2004. Yes, the SWP today has good points.
they've just published a wonderful four-hundred page book
on the Cuban urban underground struggle prior to the
triumph and presented it here in Havana last week.

Yet there are some old positions better left back in the
history books by Marxists who would participate in today's
struggles. How anyone can recoil so militantly from the
idea that Bush, the unelected president of the US should be
defeated is, to put it mildly, remarkable.

One of the old SWP's defects was its big tendency to attack
liberals with a much greater ferocity than it attacked
conservatives, supposedly on the basis of fighting what it
thought were "illusions". Thus, in the old SWP they made a
point of running against people like Ron Dellums or Bella
Abzug and so on. Of course in the old SWP they thought it
made no difference who won World War II, either.

After all, it was just an inter-imperialist conflict, so
the outcome was a matter of indifference to its eloquent
editorialists. This tendency to put the MAIN EMPHASIS on
the liberals was disorienting, in my opinion. I'm not by
the way saying we should have endorsed such liberals, but
to have put the MAIN FIRE on them, that was in error.

Luckily, the SWP had abandoned in practice, (though it
never formally repealed or else repudiated its militant
declaration in the editorial column of THE MILITANT that
the "main danger to the Cuban Revolution" was "in its own
leadership" by the time I was coming around in 1961. Thus
I never held that position, so I don't have to answer for
it or abandon it, but those who do defend the old SWP really
ought to have something to say about this and their silence
is eloquent.

Remember those who selectively defend the history of the
Socialist Workers Party have never yet explained how the
SWP could have been so presumptous as to publish this:
http://www.walterlippmann.com/catc.html This editorial,
which was most likely drafted by Joseph Hansen, and most
likely formally adopted by the SWP's Political Committee
OVER A YEAR AFTER THE TRIUMPH OF THE CUBAN REVOLUTION,
is omitted from, and never mentioned in the anthology
of Hansen's writings on Cuba published posthumously by
the SWP. Indeed, just a few weeks ago the SWP published
a 1978 account of its earlier views toward Cuba, but
refernces to THE MILITANT's actual positions were left
out and/or glossed over.

(Amusingly, THE MILITANT, in publishing what it said were
excerpts from Harry Ring's 1978 interview with Joseph
Hansen, provided no photograph of Hansen, though a rather
nice portrait, taken by and credited to me, appeared in
the original 1978 issue of THE MILITANT.)

Parenthetically, it's just that kind of thinking about
and attitude toward Cuba a year after the triumph which
continues to guide the SWP today in Venezuela where it
intransigently refuses to learn from past experience and
see the leadership role being played by President Chavez
and the working people who are supporting his movement.


Walter Lippmann
=======================================

TONY ABDO WROTE:
The old SWP had many defects, but some very important
strong points, too. One of them was its ability to make
antiimperialism the principle task for American
revolutionaries that united within the SWP party
politicking was.

Both Louis Proyect and Walter Lippman, each in their own
way, show this tendency of retreat from previously held
political positions that many of the SWP asteroid comrades
now engage in. Under the guise that there is something
special about the current political allignments that justs
makes their new found beliefs of flirting with alligning
themselves with a capitalist political party somehow
urgent, these comrades are doing all sorts of new twisting
and turning.



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