Re: [Marxism] Re:SWP resolution

[Steve Gabosch <sgabosch@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 4/13/2005 Dayne Goodwin wrote:
> Dear Steve,
>         Would you please honestly report on what the U.S. SWP's
> participation in the U.S. movement to get U.S. troops out of Iraq has
> been?
>         If you care to, please also report on your own participation in
> the U.S. movement to get U.S. troops out of Iraq.
>         thank you, Dayne Goodwin


Dayne,

If I could, I would report on it, but I have no direct or personal
knowledge of the U.S. SWP's activities to get U.S. troops out of Iraq other
than what I read in the Militant and the New International, and have heard
about in a few public meetings such as hearing Roger Calero, their
candidate for president, speak last year.

As I understand it, their orientation is toward a small but growing layer
of militant-minded workers in the mines, mills, factories, manufacturing
shops - and associated neighborhoods and shopping areas.  They concentrate
most of their political work on talking politics and getting involved in
the socio-economic struggles of working people, as often as not in places
other than the major urban areas.  The SWP considers the war in Iraq of
central importance, and covers it extensively in its press.  But
strategically, rather than focusing on propaganda actions and antiwar
coalition work as its main method of participation in the struggle to bring
the troops home - as it did during the Vietnam War - it is putting its
energy into attracting radicalizing layers of workers to Marxist politics -
proletarian internationalist Marxist politics, in its terminology - and
through that work, helping build a leadership network that can lead a mass
movement of class-conscious workers capable of confronting and eventually
defeating imperialism with a class struggle program, proletarian methods of
struggle, and ultimately the victory of a workers and farmers government.

As for me, these days I don't hold myself out as an example of activism,
neither according to the SWP's orientation toward middle and lower working
class militancy, nor the more common leftist model of orienting toward
urban upper working class and lower middle class radicalism, although I
have done plenty of each in the past. I have not been a member of the SWP
for well over 20 years.  But spurred especially by the current Iraq war, I
have been awakened from something of a slumber, and am now actively
rethinking and reestablishing my political bearings, giving serious thought
to where I should try to fit in to the upcoming political storms and class
battles we are all likely to face around the world.

And part of how I am doing this attempt at orientation is to seriously look
under the hood of the different political tendencies by paying attention to
the analytical assumptions and strategical perspectives they each base
their work on.  So let me speak a few moments, if I may, about one aspect
of how I am going about that.

How does one go about taking such a look "under the hood?"  First and
foremost, I think portraying what people are really saying is
essential.  But doing that itself is a challenge.  How does one learn to
accurately portray what this or that political tendency, group, party etc.
is saying?  In my opinion, to do this, grasping the analytical assumptions
and strategic perspectives of each one is required.  This is the point I
was making in my little polemic with Joe.

Descriptive terms like "sectarian," "abstentionist," and "undemocratic,"
applied by a number of Marxmail writers toward the SWP(US), are not
descriptions of *analytical assumptions* and *strategic perspectives* -
they are descriptions of their own conclusions about what they see as the
political *consequences* of *flawed* assumptions and perspectives.  They
are restricting themselves to a description of the cart and leaving out an
analysis of the horse, the strategical perspectives that actually drive the
disagreeable consequences and conclusions.  People certainly have a right
to their opinions and conclusions.  But stating one's conclusions over and
over is not the same thing as an evaluation of a political group's core
analysis and strategy.  A steady practice of doing so amounts to putting
the cart before the horse.

What I am interested in seeing, from time to time, is not more wrangling
over differing conclusions.  Information exchange about who is saying and
doing what is good, but arguing ad nauseum over conclusions becomes
wearisome.  It starts getting noisy and eventually rude.  Louis Proyect
will step in to such discussions when he has to.

But there is another level upon which I think productive discussion and
debate can be conducted.  Productive discourse and principled discussions
can be conducted about the *core analytical and strategic differences*
between tendencies.  This is different from just condemning - and
especially misportraying - one another's conclusions.

I think all groups on the left deserve not just to be understood about what
they are concluding, what stands they are taking and activities they are
carrying out, but also what strategic perspective their positions flow
from.  When Joe made an attempt to analyze a recent SWP resolution, I
thought that was a good step in the right direction - he was attending to
an actual SWP statement of its core ideas.  However, it seemed to me his
post was devoid of a meaningful description of those ideas.  He wound up
only talking about his conclusions about the SWP, not the reality of what
the SWP actually says, or what the SWP's analysis of the world and strategy
toward the working class really is - that is, *whence* (from where) the SWP
draws the tactical and political conclusions Joe disagrees with.

This kind of discussion about strategic differences between political
tendencies won't end the war in Iraq or US imperialism's ability to conduct
such invasions, wars and occupations.  A genuine discussion of strategy is
not a sufficient condition for such an historic task - at least in my
view.  But in my opinion, it is a necessary one.

In solidarity,
~ Steve Gabosch











_______________________________________________
Marxism mailing list
Marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism