Re: [Marxism] Camejo and Shawki/ISO and so it goes...

[Brian Shannon <Brian_Shannon@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

In a message dated 10/30/2004 7:52:52 PM Pacific Standard Time,
mjunaidalam@xxxxxxxxxx writes: I agree with this completely. Too much
breezy and facile one-sided dismissal is going on here.

To which Octob1917@xxxxxxx replies:
I'm baffled by this statement, to be honest. If you could enumerate for
me anything of substance the US Left is doing, or has done recently, to
offer any meaningful resistance to the ongoing assaults by the ruling
class at home and/or abroad I would be grateful. My dismissal is based
on empirical fact, along with my experience of revolutionary/socialist
organisations and the outstanding work they are doing in Scotland and
in the occupied Six Counties of Ireland.

There is absolutely no militancy here, nobody risks anything, and that
in the end is what it takes. I say it again, the organised Left in the
US has succeeded only in repelling workers, due in large part to an
intellectual snobbery responsible for substituting paternalism for
solidarity. This talk about inserting revolutionaries into factories,
etc., is just puerile, romantic nonsense; as if that could even be
considered given the reality of the present state of the US Left and
its lack of coherence and, again, militancy. Every leader I've come
across is not a worker, rather a professional intellectual, occupying a
sinecure on some university campus or other.

The only hope is a new formation arising out of the nascent MWM
movement or an organic leadership arising out of the oppressed
communities. The potential for revolutionary consciousness is already
there, reflected in the amount of resources and energy the state
expends in colonising black and Latino youth, in keeping blacks on the
bottom rung of the economic ladder, and in attacking and destroying
anything approaching unity in those communities for fear of where it
might lead.
_________

"puerile, romantic, nonsense":
--such as the non-de-plume of Octob1917?

"meaningful resistance to the ongoing assaults by the ruling class at
home/or abroad":
--and the massive demonstrations against the Iraq war, tempered now as
always during U.S. elections when the non-ruling class candidates
groups are so small

"the only hope is a new formation arising out of the nascent MWM
movement or an organic leadership arising out of the oppressed
communities":
--i.e., we sit on our hands and "hope"; god forbid that we either
become academics or "inserted revolutionaries"

"every leader I've come across is ... a professional intellectual,
occupying a sinecure on some university campus or other":
--indeed, there are spokespersons who have academic positions, but no
one in the U.S. considers them as leaders, nor in fact do they consider
themselves as such. Most of the real leaders here did go to college and
got some degree or other, as do 50% of U.S. residents, but are in no
ways academicians. If you want to criticize some ex-lawyers, present
and former teachers, and many computer tehnos, you might have a point.
Please name a single such sinecured leader. BTW, I do not consider
writers whom I respect such as Chomsky, Lynn, Brenner, etc., as
leaders, nor would they ever claim to be. The one who comes closes is
James Petras, but he is retired from academia. His leadership is
achieved by his writing, but he does not claim to be a leader
"on-the-ground"

from Brian Shannon, one time user of the non-de-plumes of utopian and
Touraine
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