Re: [Marxism] Re: Anti-imperialism?

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

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Joaquín Bustelo" <jbustelo@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>

> The risks for a young Black or Latino are much greater. They're not nearly
> as likely to have the family/friends social network nor contacts to get 
> them
> out of jail quickly. They're not likely to have a "movement" job, and if
> they have a real job, they're likely to lose it. The cops and courts will
> treat them much more severely than the white kids. And if they're from
> another country, they're likely to lose their status as legal residents or
> be directly deported as "illegals" and be ineligible to come back.

This is ahistorical, even reacist bullshit. I don't care if your name is 
Latino, you sound like a "Cameo" saying that (brown outside, white inside).

The fact is that the only huge movement in the USA to use civil disobedience 
and direct action as a form of true social protest and *change* have 
historically been Blacks and Latinos. From the Underground Railroad, that 
while having the support of a wide-group of whites, was actually run mostly 
by blacks who actually even risked going back to their former plantations as 
"conductors", to the black struggles for economic justice and integration 
into the union movement, to the Civil Rights Struggle. Almost anyone who is 
Latino and to the left of Ferrer in NYC is in some way connected to the

If you want to tell a black person Civil Disobidience is not for them, you 
have to tell them to forget about Rosa Parks and the 1,000s that followed 
her to freedom.

I mean, you have everyright to believe civil disobidience is not the correct 
way right now, but when you argue with such lack of historical connection it 
can't help but completely undermining your argument.

> "To deny this will split the movement negatively," Macdonald Stainsby
> argues. I say bullshit. The ones who would be splitting the movement are 
> the
> tiny handful of ultralefts who would substitute venting their own 
> moralistic
> indignation for the power that can only come from the masses of working
> people organized and mobilized around their own interests.

You mean, this "tiny handful of ultralefts" is so powerful, so incredibly 
dangerous, that it can destroy a real, big, mass movement?

I mean? How come?

The logic is simply not there.

The truth is that to this day the biggest problem the anti-war movement is 
not the "ultra-left" but the ABB crowd who use their economic power to turn 
the anti-war movement into a base structure of the Democratic Party, and 
hence objectively of imperialism.

You are being the equivalent of the ISO but from the right, you believe the 
problem is the "enemy within" and not the real enemy without. Marxists, in 
my opinion, should be building bridges left and right, seeking out common 
ground and engaging in comradely advice and criticism (including 
self-criticism) instead of sending ahistorical rhetorical demolition squads 
to destroy said bridges.

RR said:

"Two years ago, Out Now, was an ultra-left slogan."

This is completely true, and it exhibits the demoralization, a result of ABB 
influence, in the sensible marxist movement, that they are doing the job of 
the right in trying to purge the movement of the ultra-left if they dont 
realize this.

As I said during the Goff debate, I will defend the ISO against the real 
red-baiters, and criticize them when I see disagreement. But if we forget, 
in practice, who the *real* enemy is, we end up with a joke of an argument, 
one that combines, as RR correctly says tired denounciations of a phantom 
"ultra-left" with misguided, ahistorical, and ill-hearted use of the "race 
card".

Such dogmatism is as harmful to the anti-war movement as the ISO trying to 
sell their paper at incovinient times. It shows to our real enemies that we 
are easy to devide and conquer, and hence gives them the strategic upper 
hand in their goal of turning the anti-war movement into an electoral base 
for the Democrats.

On the other hand, the CofC and the CPUSA I am sure are very happy about 
this. They all call anything to the left of the SPUSA "ultra-left".

sks 



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