RE: [Marxism] Camejo to speak at CCNY

[Joaquín <jbustelo@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Steve Gabosh insists he sees nothing but "left liberal" positions in the
Avocado declaration.

I think Steve continues to insist on judging "positions" abstractly rather
than looking towards social forces in motion.

The idea that *today* it is a "left liberal" position to break with the
democrats and republicans is preposterous. The liberals, left, right and
center, as well as the radicals, most self-styled socialists, and everyone
else and their sister have a very definite position on these elections, and
it is not to break with the two party system. It is ABB.

The interesting question is why, instead of focusing on the specific debate
the Avocado paper addressed, Gabosh insists on judging it from the point of
view of Eternal Truths, and on that lofty plain, finds that there is nothing
*inherently* revolutionary or progressive in breaking from the two party
system, "left liberals" could agree with that, in theory.

Gabosh's comments come from his training in the SWP tradition. Frankly, the
SWP's approach to election campaigns was ultimatistic and not based on the
transitional method, despite the party's claimed adherence to Trotsky's
Transitional Program as its programmatic foundation. 

The SWP never, ever in the entire time I was in it (or since, as far as I
know), which covers a period of more than three decades, approached an
election campaign from a concrete analysis of social forces in motion. 

>From the 1930's it had inherited some analysis done by people then, and
reified it into immutable categories (also partly distorting and denaturing
it).

The "labor party based on the unions" slogan thus wound up being
counterposed to interventions in the electoral arena based on the social
movements underway at any given time. But the reason the Labor Party slogan
was adopted to begin with was precisely *because* labor was a living social
movement in the 1930's. 

And advocating a labor party in the 1960's and 1970's, as the SWP did, was
foolish. It was basically a statement saying, look to political leadership
from the likes of Hoffa, Shanker and Meany. With the actual, really-existing
unions under those kinds of leaders, to campaign for a labor party based on
the unions was goofy.

Similarly, Trotsky's position in support of the right of Black people to
representation (even if they chose to be represented by a Democrat) was
largely stripped of its democratic content (by Pathfinder editors who in the
1970's edition of Trotsky's discussions with CLR James and other SWP leaders
added a footnote claiming that Trotsky did not mean what he plainly said)
and then blown up into this idea of a Black and Chicano party which were
said to be permissible only thanks to the overwhelmingly proletarian
composition of these oppressed nationalities.

This represented a liquidation of the national question and the democratic
rights of Black people into the class question. 

People who come from the SWP tradition simply have got to get used to the
idea that it offers pretty much nothing in terms of electoral tactics for
today.

How goofy this tradition is can be judged from Steve Gabosh's desire that
Camejo elucidate his current views on Marx's 1871 writings on "the
dictatorship of the proletariat" as compared and contrasted with Lenin's
writings 100 years ago on "the democratic dictatorship of the proletariat
and the peasantry." 

Can you hear it now, Camejo on CSpan, as he was a few weeks ago,
expostulating on the "democratic dictatorship"? Isn't this just plain lunacy
worthy of a Monty Python sketch?

The Avocado Declaration (NOT "resolution") is not a party program. It is not
a statement meant for the ages. It was something drafted after the
gubernatorial campaign in California to lay out perspectives for the debate
in the Green Party and generally on the Left around the 2004 presidential
elections. It focused on those issues in a strategic way, but it was not,
and doesn't pretend to be, some sort of statement of revolutionary
principles and strategy applicable to all times, places and circumstances. 

It may well be that under some circumstances, "left liberals" will call for
breaking from the Democrats and Republicans and it is true that some "left
liberals," as well as self-styled socialists and communists and of course
the realo demogreen gang, give lip service to the idea of breaking with the
Democrats and Republicans, just not right now, at least not in the
"strategic" states. 

That Gabosh doesn't even realize that this *imaginary* break with the
Democrats and Republicans in the abstract by all these folks is simply
"left" cover for *capitulating* to the Democrats and Republicans in the real
world is astounding. That's what comes from evaluating things on the level
of abstract ideas, rather than looking at real life and real politics and
what different social forces and currents are really doing.

Gabosh urges people to support sect socialist propaganda campaigns rather
than the Nader-Camejo campaign on the grounds that, since neither can win,
it is better to vote for a "socialist" rather than a "left liberal"
strategy.  I believe the WWP and SWP campaigns are *harmful*; they are
sectarian exercises is pseudo revolutionary phrase mongering; they merit no
support. In places where Camejo and Nader aren't on the ballot, people
should just write them in.

Gabosh wants to focus on things on the plane of eternal verities like ideas
that are inherently "left liberal." This is the result of his political
miseducation in the idealist, anti-Marxist methodology of the SWP sect.
Truth is concrete, the point is not to pontificate about the world but to
*change* it.

This year, unlike most years in my political lifetime, and thanks in no
small part to the decline of sects like the SWP, there is  in this election
a genuine way of working towards changing the world. And that is by joining
and promoting the Nader-Camejo campaign, which is speaking out to tens of
millions of people about the war, about the need for a living wage,
universal health care, and using all those issues to drive home the central
point that the problem with politics in the United States is that it is
dominated by a corporate duopoly and that working people need to break with
those two parties.

TO THEIR ETERNAL CREDIT, Camejo and Nader have not larded this message over
with tons of rhetoric about "socialism," much less the "dictatorship of the
proletariat." The ONLY effect of adding that to the campaign would be to
turn it into one more sect exercise by trying to cram down working people's
throats ideas which today are completely incomprehensible and foreign to
them, but which tomorrow they will accept quite readily, provided they break
with the two party system and begin organizing themselves around their own
class interests.

There is no other road for masses of people to socialist conclusions than
the one of practical, immediate self-organization and activity. 

Under U.S. conditions, trying to inject "socialist" propaganda into a mass
arena like the electoral one is sectarian foolishness. 

Joaquín


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