[Marxism] Re: Quoting Winston Churchill and not looking like a "nut"

["Fred Feldman" <ffeldman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Lueko wrote:
Breaking open the class divide, not plastering over it ("WE have a
budget crisis" - Camejo) is on the order of the day.


But contrary to what is preached by the SWP today,  "breaking open the
class divide, not plastering over it" is not primarily a matter of
formulation and still less of revolutionary etiquette. When you get past
that kind of politics, you find that the middle-class Nader campaign
stands closer to the working-class standpoint than the 100 percent
proletarian (except for a handful of leaders-for-life and 10 or 20
million bucks) Socialist Workers Party, where the workers make policy
about as much as they do in the British Labor Party.  When middle-class
forces take an initiative in politics that challenges the imperialist
parties on the war, it is a mistake to reject it unless you have a
better class alternative to offer.

The leadership of the SWP firmly believes that they do not adapt to
Rumsfeld and Bush because they would never dream of calling them "Don"
or "W."  But almost every word they say on the elections or the war is
an adaptation in fact.  The revolutionary etiquette of not using
nicknames has become a cover, a way of hiding the shift in class axis
from themselves and readers of the Militant.

Similarly the  SWP leadership know that they don't bend to the
imperialist war drive when they stand against the Iraqi resistance,
"objectively" sing the praises of the New Model imperialist army, and so
on.  Why?  Unlike the peaceniks, they don't say "our troops."

And they know that they are a better leadership for the anti-imperialist
struggle than the "bonapartist" Hugo Chavez (who is guilty of the high
crime of "presenting himself as a strong man") because they woud never
mention God or Christ in a speech without a sneer.

The politics of millions is also not the politics of the perfectly
cleaned-up formulation.
Fred Feldman

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