[Marxism] RE: The Militant and Who Cares?

["Tony Abdo" <gojack10@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

I am sympathetic to Fred Feldman and what he has to say about the SWP and
his time in it. If he disagrees with what I had to say about how the SWP
walked away from the womens movement and how it turned away from being
focussed on opposing US  military interventionism, then he should explain
why?   But the group is totally irrelevent in today's world, and it really
is a waste of time to microscopically be examining its current
pronouncements in the Militant. Who cares?

The causes of  the SWP's 'degeneration and collapse' is a 'legitimate
topic', as Fred puts it. It is a legiitmate topic because it shed light on
the weaknesses and strengths of today's socialists.  We can understand
todays movement some, by simply taking a look at where it came from.  And
about the only MAJOR accomplishment of the US socialist Left since the '30s
was its role in building the antiwar movement of the '60s and early '70s. So
its's definitely worth studying the era to see what went wrong.  And
something did go wrong, that we should be definite about.

What killed the SWP IMO, was group think and a lack of a true democratic
culture within its ranks.   The organization was seriously overly
centralized, and the NO tried too much to micro-manage local affairs.  This
made it impossible to learn from mistakes, and to grow within the local
culture of areas where the SWP had branches. It made it impossible for the
group to reconsider bad national decisions made within the NO, and applied
everywhere without any real thought or feedback being accepted from comrades
who had to carry oiut those often times, totally miserable NO orders.
There is a big lesson here for groups like the WWP today from this.  Because
the WWP suffers from the exact same mindset. It is overly centralized, and
is not able to grow on the local levels because of that.  But maybe that's
another story?, and certainly any WWP comrade would be eager to dispute my
comments here.

A real problem in discussing the SWP's degeneration with exSWPers, is simply
that many of them who still remain a little bit political, supported all the
earlier errors and mistakes that led the SWP into its spiral into
obsolescence, and irrelevence.   Many who stayed around, were part of the
NO.   Those who got burned at the local level, often have just disappeared
out of poltical involvement altogether.

Most of these exSWPers who want to continue to follow the Militant's
scribblings,  really don't have that good a picture of just how many other
SWPers were hemorraged out of the SWP in the mid and late '70s.  Instead,
they see the problem as merely beginning when it became apparent that they
themselves were about to get the boot.  Truth is, though, that the SWP had
major, major problems in the mid '70s, back in the time that these loyal
exSWPers consider to be some sort of Golden Era of the SWP.  Even at the
height of building the antiwar movement of that time, the SWP was just
hanging by a thread organizationally. That's just the plain truth of the
matter, as many of us experienced it.

I'll leave off here.  Truth of the matter is, that few that did not directly
experience the situation can today see much value in studying it at all.   I
think it worth study though, just to see how an organization that had
organized demos of over a million people in the streets against the US
military, could then just walk away from the issue almost entirely.   And
feel that it was the natural thing to do even!   It is scary to think that
something similar might happen to the antiwar movement that today is being
built.   I don't think that we should think of this as a natural course of
events as the SWPers once did, and most of the exSWPers still do.    We
should strive to build upon any future victory, and not just throw the gains
away.

Tony Abdo
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

<<I disagree with Tony Abdo.  I disagree with his assessments of the SWP's
policy on abortion rights and the Vietnam War in the 1970s, and I think
that the debates over the Militant have some political importance --
especially, for people like myself, who come out of that tradition
(forty-year of close association in my case).  Of course, the heart of
the discussion is the problems and politics of building a revolutionary
organization in the United States.  The SWP was a major effort in that
direction and its strengths and weaknesses in its good days, the causes
of its degeneration and collapse, and the errors in its politics today
-- some of which have a characteristic rather than unique character --
are a legitimate topic.

I also think that Tony exaggerates the Militant's irrelevance today,
though not by very much. Its worth mentioning that party supporters have
been leaders in several small strikes in recent years and that they are
currently BUILDING the April 25 antiabortion protest.  They are still
part of the US left, a hardened political sect but not a Hare Krishna
organization. In any case, I can't shake the issue yet and so I'm going
to let it play out.  My obsessions sometimes turn out to revolve around
one or another political point that has some validity.

If Tony is past all this, he should go past these posts.  People submit
to the list what they want to write, and read what they want to read.>>

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