[Marxism] Re: assisting the work of the police

["Fred Feldman" <ffeldman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I agree with Lueko and Andy.  I got the impression that this
"encyclopedia article" on the SWP is being written with a slovenly and
cynical attitude that refuses to take the SWP seriously, which should be
an obligation from the standpoint of responsible authorship.  He
certainly leaves no impression of being interested in what list members
might know about anything but this or that faction or clique fight.  I
can assure him that the Cannonites, Weissites, Dobbsites, Weinsteinites
etc.  did a lot in the US class struggle.  They were far from solely
preoccupied with calling each other names or expelling each other.

Lou Proyect's suggestion a year or so ago about Barnes'' Swiss bank
account was of course wise-guy speculation, and not intended to be taken
for anything else.  I am surprised that the author of the "encyclopedia
article" would take it seriously as a source of information.  There is
absolutely no evidence that any of the $20 million is being used for any
personal purposes.  And there were articles in that discussion that
would have conveyed a more accurate impression. From what I know, the
party leadership, including Jack Barnes, live frugally on subsistence.
If somebody occassionally buys them an opera ticket, or they have an
expensive meal somewhere, I think that is their business and no big
deal.

As far as I know, the estimated $20 million, to the extent that it was
not spent in obtaining the new headquarters, is invested in the
financial markets or real estate or so forth. I think that because the
foundation-corporate structure directed by the central party leaders
already had such investments long before  the sale.  And I assume that
the money is not being left in a great big sock under a floorboard in
the national office.

I think the corporate structure has contributed overall to the
bureaucratization of the party, and that is what the SWP leadership is
-- a small sectarian bureaucracy in the labor movement, with modest
privileges (above all, basic personal security plus the privileges of
command which are not unimportant in small groups within the
hierarchical class structure of capitalism, and the membership's basic
moral obligation to admire them no end.) The top leaders have never had
to get an industrial job or work in the real world of the labor
movement, but rather issue commands at the rank and file workers which
the latter have a moral obligation  to "internalize" -- voluntarily, of
course. (The "voluntary" character of the "internalization" is also an
order.) At any rate, that is the bureaucratic structure, operation, and
mode of thought I experienced in the concrete in my last years in the
party, and anything else seems to be guess work and fantasy.

 The leaders are not multimillionaires although they manage many
millions of dollars. But social being does determine consciousness.  As
money managers, the leaders have been much more successful -- for broad
political reasons relating to the state of the class struggle, but also
because of their bureaucratic and sectarian methods in the class
struggle-- than as party leaders.  And the corporate structure increases
the pressures of apparent capitalist success and working-class "failure"
on the leaders and rank and file.

The corporate structure reinforces the top-down structure of the party,
where the party leaders view themselves as speaking with the divine lips
of Brahma, while the rank-and-file represent the grosser portions if his
anatomy -- sadly prone to error and "adaptation" and bending to
"imperialist pressures" unless the truth is firmly imposed from above.
While the ranks may be workers for decades and the top leaders have
never been workers, the ranks are truly proletarian  only so long as
they echo the divine wisdom of the leaders.

I personally think that the list should not be used for the kind of
gossip that can sponaneously bubble up after a few drinks in a bar, but
it is hard to prevent this entirely.  It is my impression, however, that
there is a lot less of it than there used to be, and I hope this
discussion will reduce it further.

At the same time, Gabosch hypes the police speculation, in a way which
encourages paranoid secrecy and other bad sectarian habits -- loose
speculation such as Louis made also being a sectarian habit. How exactly
is Louis' comment to be used to frame-up the SWP?  Especially since it
has no basis in fact.  Has the Bush administration become  a fascist
regime capable of carrying out that kind of a crackdown against the
left.  They weren't successful in framing up Calero. What is the
evidence that they are looking to invent from whole cloth a case about
nonexistent Swiss bank accounts?

I don't think this should be resolved by unsubbing Steve or even Lou,
but there is a touch of cop-baiting in Steve's exaggerated carrying on
albout the cops.  Is Lou offering to testify about the Swiss bank
account?  The claim that "bad politics" -- and that's what was involved
in Lou's speculations about bank accounts (and Steve's speculations
about cop frame-ups that are quite impossible at present, and will not
need Lou's gossip when and if the time comes)-  "serves the cops" and
therefore is related to them in some way is an argument that has been
used slanderously against the SWP and others for a long time.

Fred Feldman



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