[Marxism] Re: Attacking liberals

[Philip Ferguson <plf13@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Walter wrote:

"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'... to have put
the MAIN FIRE on them, that was in error."


Well, down here the problem was the opposite.  The NZ section of the FI,
which was tied by umbilical chord to New York, continuously forged
alliances with liberals in the 1970s and early 1980s.  They got the
shock of their political life when these people, who were generally
Labourites, then launched the biggest attack on the working class since
the Depression.

Pretty much all the Labour MPs and liberal figures that the SAL tried to
be friends with in the 70s, and solicited alliances with, and took
visiting SWP leaders along to parliament to visit, became neo-liberals
economically in the 1980s.

Since economic neo-liberals in NZ were predominantly also social
liberals - ie liberal on issues like gay rights, abortion, race
relations and so on - their orientation to liberals completely screwed
up the SAL and the organisation went into terminal decline in the
mid-late 1980s.

So, down here, they utterly underestimated the perfidy of liberals and
this contributed massively to destroying their organisation.  And the
lot down here never took a breath without getting approval from New York.

Philip Ferguson



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