[Marxism] Re: tasks at hand

[DLVinvest@xxxxxx]

In a message dated 5/2/04 9:17:15 AM Mountain Daylight Time,
elgusanorojo@xxxxxxxxxxxxx writes:
> working-class activists should look to the actual motion in the unions
> and working-class communities, and seek to unite the actual fights going
> on today to give them a much sharper political focus.

t may be necessary to instigate some "actual motion", not just try to
[provide "a sharper political focus" -- locally, for example, there's not much
emanating from/within the (relatively weak) unions, but there is alot of ferment
bubling around and up from the "workingclass communities", just not enough
"workingclass activist" to go around.

I've been concentrating on building relationships with younger activists, not
necessarli class-conscious but workers, around police brutality and the whole
range of issues that raises among workingclass, especially of color, both
because that's what's upsetting lots of people, especially youngsters, and
because it's a strategic weak point of the ruling class, exposes the hypocrisy 
of
bourgeois law at their first line of defense.

> Right now I believe in *every* significant U.S. city there are probably
> several "local" issues, (school funding, mass transit, gentrification,
> welfare, recreation facilities, immigration, environmental racism,
> public hospitals and many others) around which there is some motion. The
> common thread tying these together is going to be funding, very often
> cutbacks, and the ruling class will be going through the different
> sectors involved, quite consciously and systematically pitting one
> against the other.

right, and for example, we had a thousand people show up for a neighborhood
meeting to oppose a local developer's plan to put up a WalMart. Mostly white,
lots of liberals, some small shopkeepers fearful of competition, even
gentrifying yups, but openly pro-worker (UFCW helped produce signs and 
leaflets),
immediately see that "low price" means low wages for walmart workers and worse
conditions in countries that produce for them, explicitly anti-(big)-capitalist
and implicitlly anti-imperialist. The developer and Wal-Mart flak got hooted and
booed throughout, despite attempts by the liberal Dem council-person to keep
the lid on in the name of civility, while a grocery clerk who bought a house
in the development explained to cheers how she wouldn't have been able to
afford it if she worked at Wal-Mart. Not a revolutionary movement, but you try 
to
throw some sparks on the tinder : pickets at the developer's house and
restaurant drew dozens on a Friday night in a snow storm. There's definetly a 
lot in
motion, mostly under the surface, but it's percolating, not yet erupting.

> I think we should try to bring these and other issues *together* in a
> common movement demanding more government funding and just as the ruling
> class has followed a strategic line with two axis (cut taxes on the
> rich, fund the war not social needs) we should operate along the same
> axis (tax the rich and unfund the war).

The war is quickly turning from criminal aggression to boondoggle to disaster
for the ruling class. The workingclass and potential allies feel it in the
wallet already, but will soon be paying in more blood, which also stimulates
patriotic reaction. We need to expose the myth that "our" troops are "heroes" 
and
 we need to make the moral-ethical argument about what imperialism means for
the victms over there, the uncounted body count. We have to unhinge the
workingclass and young people, starting with the latter, from the bosses' 
version of
their motive for the war -- give your life for your way of life -- and make
clear that their giving up their lives and taking others for the profits of a
few, for an empire. "Out Now Tax the Rich! Health Care not Bombs! Send Our Kids
to School, not Iraq!" etc.


Douglas L. Vaughan, Jr.
Investigations
for Print, Film & Electronic Media
3140 W. 32nd Ave.
Denver CO 80211
303-455-9429
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