Re: [Marxism] Camejo to speak at CCNY

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

Steve Gabosch wrote:
> The other question I had was where does Camejo stand, based on things he
> has recently written, on how to make a revolution.

My guess is that Peter Camejo basically sees things the same way that he
saw them in 1980 when I first got in touch with him after he was
expelled from the SWP. I wanted to understand why the SWP was becoming a
sect.

Here's the gist of what I absorbed from him. I should mention that Peter
was the strongest influence on my political evolution and a sort of
forefather to this mailing list, along with the late Bert Cochran who
broke with sectarianism 25 years earlier.

Peter had been profoundly influenced by the Nicaraguan revolution. He
told me that the spirit of a living revolution was completely at odds
with the growing sectarianism and dogmatism of the Trotskyist movement,
no matter how much lip-service the party was devoting to the FSLN. He
was determined to come to grips with the sterile workerism that was
already beginning to throw the SWP into a crisis.

So he went to Venezuela to study Lenin with fresh eyes. Rather than
reading something like "What is to be Done" through the prism of the SWP
or any other sectarian group, he would read Lenin in context. I have
tried to do the same thing myself. Basically he came to the conclusion
that the Bolshevik Party was far more like the FSLN or the Cuban
Communist Party in terms of its strategic and tactical flexibility. He
decided that it was necessary in the USA was to create a true vanguard,
not a little chapel dedicated to Trotsky with a thousand or so true
believers.

When he came back to the USA to argue his point of view in the party, he
was told that he was no longer welcome--this after 25 years as a member.
It was pretty obvious that the SWP was afraid to allow a popular
oppostionist to be heard.

Peter accepts all the classical Marxist teachings on the state, etc. His
emphasis is not so much on this but how to create a broad-based mass
movement in the USA, which can ultimately lead to a revolutionary
working class party. As such, his approach is diametrically opposed to
the sectarian model that attempts to recruit people to a fully
elaborated program by ones or twos or threes. He sees formations such as
the Green Party as a means to an end. You are possibly confused because
the Green Party statements, the Avocado Declaration, the Nader-Camejo
campaign literature do not put forward socialist tasks.

As a rule of thumb, small sectarian groups are virtually unsurpassed in
their ability to proclaim the need for revolution, but history teaches
us that whenever genuinely massive revolutionary struggles take place,
such groups are bypassed completely. If Fidel Castro had clasped the
organizational principles of the SWP to his bosom in the 1950s, he would
have remained a marginal figure at best.

The July 26th Movement, the FSLN, the FMLN, etc. did not organize people
around the need to abolish capitalism. Mostly they projected democratic
reforms. For example, if you read "History Will Absolve Me," Castro's
statement to the courtroom in the 1953 trial following the abortive
attack on the Moncada barracks, the words socialism and capitalism do
not appear *once*.

Castro does not call for the overthrow of capitalism, but puts forward
rather modest demands such as granting "workers and employees the right
to share 30% of the profits of all the large industrial, mercantile and
mining enterprises, including the sugar mills."

After Batista was overthrown, many Latin American experts tried to
explain why Castro overthrew capitalism despite the complete absence of
socialist verbiage in his speeches and in the written statements of his
movement. Some, including in the SWP, thought that he was a kind of
accidental Marxist who fell into communism only because the USA gave him
no alternative. The SWP described the July 26th movement as a "blunt
instrument"--guerrillas who shot their way into power but not really
understanding what they were doing.

In reality, the leaders of the urban and rural movement in Cuba were
steeped in Marxism, but not the Trotskyist subgenre. They were much more
influenced by Mariategui and other lesser-known thinkers. If they had
followed the Trotskyist model, it is certain that they would have never
succeeded. In fact, it is almost a guarantee of failure to adopt the
party-building model of the self-declared Leninist sects.

For some, this model has its advantages. Instead of trying to think
creatively about very difficult political problems--such as operating in
a country like the USA where there has not been a mass working class
radicalization since 1945 or so--it is much easier to operate on the
basis of fixed rules and formulas: put out a newspaper that issues
proclamations about the need for socialism; adopt the symbols and
language of Russia in 1917; run candidates who make statements about the
inability of capitalism to solve the environmental crisis, etc. In fact,
the SLP of Daniel DeLeon pioneered this model and is still banging away
at it.

I have to admit that I have not been in touch with Peter since 1987 when
we had a falling out over personal matters. I did go up to him at the
RNC protest last month and we chatted for about 15 minutes. It was the
first time we had spoken since 1987.

I would leave it like this. Peter's main concern is over how to build
the movement. He really does not get involved in trying to make any big
theoretical breakthoughs over the character of workers states, etc. He
is preoccupied with what James P. Cannon described as the "art of
politics", namely knowing what to do next.

For a pretty good idea of the sort of thing he has been writing in the
recent period, which has a much different character than his campaign
statements, I'd urge you to look at an article he presented to the DSP
in Australia in an attempt to persuade them to break with the SWP
party-building methodology--even more than they had did.

It is titled "Return to Materialism" and can be read at:

http://members.optushome.com.au/spainter/Materialism.html


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