Re: [Marxism] re: Supporting the resistance?

["Carlos A. Rivera" <cerejota@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

----- Original Message -----
From: "M. Junaid Alam" <mjunaidalam@xxxxxxxxxx>
> This is a different problem entirely. It is not a function of the debate
> among anti-war activists and intellectuals about the nature of the
> resistance, but of the general deadness of American class and social
> consciousness. That is the difference between the 1960's and now.

I agree with you here, and this difference with the 60s can't be overlooked
in the current situation, but doesn't determine it. By the early 1960s,
class conciousness in the USA was already pre-figuring our current dead end,
and (early) opposition to the Vietnam War was essentially a
marxist/ultra-liberal intellectual thing, much like it is today. A big
concrete difference was the civil rights struggle, which politically
prepared a lot of people.

I agree with Lou in that  litmus testing on the resistance around the war is
wrong. Yet I don't think litmus testing around the immedeate pull out is
wrong. The anti-war movement would lose its name if its sole unifying demand
weren't

And while I share his respect for the ISO, and as I have mentioned before
have close comrades in the ISO, my people in Puerto Rico are somewhat
reluctlantly leading a premature student strike brought upon largely the
ISO's ultra-leftism and petty-bourgeoise workerism (my org, unlike the ISO,
is actually working class, even the student organization, famous for having
leaders who had to leave college to work, like me).

Yet Louis is being disingeneous (because he most certaintly couldnt be
ignorant to things that I, as a newcomer to the USA left are aware of). The
ISO's polemical piece is not only about what line to push within the
anti-war movement, but a largely correct sumation of the defacto
dictatorship of groups oriented to the Democratic Party within UP&J. To put
names, the CofC and the CPUSA, along with some of the Church groups. These
groups are incresingly coming in line to the "Slow Pullout" DP position,
which is essentially for the continuation of the occupation, as Junaid Alam
argues.

The ISO, in raising the question of debates, is not only trying to advance
its own political line, but also *exposing* such liquidationism.

I can live with an anti-war movement in which the single unifying demand is
the pull out of troops, even if I support the resistance. Yet I can't live
with an anti-war movement that doesn't demand inmediate pull out of troops.
That is not ultra-leftism, but plain common sense, not to mention having a
spine:

In the 60s, the SP and the Democratic Party liberals and even Nixon,
campaigned and won on "slow pull back" demands. This generated 7 years more
of war for the Vietnamese, including some of the most infamous air-raids
against civilian targets during all of the War, and the actual invasion of
Cambodia and Laos (similar to the current beating of war drums against Syria
and to a lesser extent Iran). Those in the "plural left" who sought to crush
the "Victory to the NLF!" crowd, but either wilffully or absentmindedly
forgot to crush with equal vigor the "slow pull back" crowd, ended up
objectively creating 7 more years of war in Indochina.

The right-wing in the UP&J are vegeterians who eat meat, and don't want to
have a barbecue so people can see them eating. They are objectively and
subjectively pro-imperialist. Of course, I can work with pro-imperialist in
things like gay rights, racial equality, and even in the labor movement. But
I'll be damned if I ever take up the side of a pro-imperialist in an
anti-imperialist struggle.

In particular, one must not ignore the CPUSA's (and hence CofC's) historic
relationship with the ICP, which while having all the right in the world to
demand the continued occupation are dead wrong in that position, and
certainly not a correct position for anti-imperialists, objective or
otherwise, to take.

Nor must one ignore the sepulcral silence on Afghanistan, in which the USA
has faced more per-capita losses than in Iraq, and in which their
intervention in held to much less scrutiny. This is another minimal demand
that the UP&J has incresingly abandoned.

The rot of the UP&J right-wing is evident in the slogan for the May Day demo
at the UN: against nuclear weapons. To the ultra-leftism of "Victory to the
resistance" one must, as a marxist, counter-pose the ultra-rigthism of "Ban
Nukes": ones elevate a slogan that is in essence not for them to raise
(there is no "The Resistance" and in any case, this for the Iraqis to deal
with) the others raise to a level of immediate, burning, question an
important issue that is completely unrelated to the opposition of the war in
Iraq and Afghanistan, which are the burning issues. As a matter of fact,
raising a "ban nukes" slogan actually becomes an imperialist attack line on
China, Iran and North Korea. Unless, of course, you happen to believe that
the USA would obey a "Nuke Ban" just like they obey the World Court etc etc
etc.

I believe we have witnessed the greatest coopting move on part of US
imperialism with regards of the anti-war movement, and this is not a result
of "Victory to the Resistance" ultra-leftism, which quite frankly have been
a (recent) result of demoralization, but a result of the right wing of the
movement being objectively imperialist and incresingly subjecting the same
"new" strata of activists Lou mentions not to alienating ultra-leftism, but
to coopting pro-imperialism.

red as a baboon's ass,

sks


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