Re: [Marxism] Re: Anti-imperialism

[Dayne Goodwin <dayneg@xxxxxxxx>]

        The U.S. SWP of the 1960s and 1970s didn't end up building a
successful mass anti-war movement and make a crucial contribution to the
defeat of U.S. imperialism in Vietnam because it had a "single-issue
fetish".
        The SWP succeeded in building the massive anti-war movement
because it was a serious revolutionary socialist organization with some
good cadre and some good sense.* No revolutionary socialist organization
has the good fortune that all its members have good sense and can argue
for its perspective in an informed, persuasive and non-fetishistic manner.

        My personal, not at all unusual, experience was as someone who
graduated from high school in 1964 and who supported U.S. foreign policy
in general, including whatever was necessary - i.e. military intervention
in Southeast Asia - to defeat 'the communist threat to the free world.' My
own experiences over the next several years led me to *reluctantly* decide
that i had to do whatever i could to work to end the U.S. war in Vietnam.

        I became an anti-war *activist* in 1967 and even from a remote
geographical location (northern Utah) was drawn into the orbit of the SWP
by 1969 due to the sheer fact that the SWP was clearly doing the best job
of building a politically effective anti-war movement.  Again, the last
thing i had ever intended to do was to become involved with a 'communist'
organization.  Although I became a political supporter of the SWP from
1969 (until 1983/4), i parlayed my remote geographical location and my
continuing organizational skepticism into membership in the SWP's less
centralized youth group through most of that time, with only a few years
of actual SWP membership.
        I was generally *not* the desired type of loyal, sectarian
supporter of the SWP.  Those moments when i most closely resembled an SWP
'cheerleader' were when i defended the SWP's good work against ignoramus
critics.

        Marxists are in favor of *mass* movements because in addition to
the power of our role in capitalist society, it is the power of our
overwhelming numbers that gives working people a chance to effectively
combat the capitalist class.  In a society with a working class over one
hundred million, marxists are not likely to consider anything less than
millions to be a mass movement.
        The more massive a movement in capitalist society is, the more
workers must be involved.  The dynamic direction of mass movement is
toward a general strike.  [The Vietnamese struggle, the growing resistance
of 'workers in uniform', and the existing level of mass opposition in the
U.S. convinced the U.S. government to retreat before facing such an
eventuality.  And the SWP was solidly revolutionary in making it a
priority to reach the 'workers in uniform.']

        Demonstrations that are large in numbers tend to give the
participants an encouraging sense of their current and potentially even
greater power.  Well organized large demonstrations tend to encourage
sympathetic but cautious observers that they can safely join in, which has
the side-effect of augmenting the ranks of those willing to work to
continue to build the movement.
        Well organized demonstrations are more likely to succeed in having
their political message understood by (and accurately reported to) the
many thousands/millions more who will see/read/hear about it.  One of the
first priorities of a protest movement is to communicate to as many people
as possible that there is a reasonable opposing perspective to some
government/corporate policy - and to inform people about that opposition
view.
        The familiar alternative possibility runs along the lines of
seeing/reading/hearing that some people were fighting with cops.  'Why
were they protesting?  Don't know, they must be crazy, a bunch of
troublemakers.' We know that the government (and the 'news' media) often
prefers and actively promotes this outcome.

        There is no infallible marxist recipe book to consult to figure
out 'what to do next' - how a small revolutionary socialist organization
can most effectively build working class struggle, consciousness and
unity.  What issue strikes most centrally at the heart of the capitalist
system and has the potential to most effectively raise revolutionary
working class consciousness that the capitalist two-party political
system/government serves the corporations and the rich whose interests are
antithetical to the best interests of working people?  Given the vast
horrors of the capitalist system, where to focus your resources seems to
me to be always debatable.

        When a revolutionary socialist organization decides on a priority
struggle, as the SWP did in the latter 1960s with its focus on trying to
defeat U.S. military intervention in Vietnam, then obviously you organize
around an appropriately focussed demand, or group of demands.  You don't
set out to build the anti-war movement by focussing on a demand to raise
the minimum wage.
        Again, _sans_ recipe book, you make a judgment of what is the most
effective demand to raise.  Given the political conditions and mass
political consciousness at this time and place, what will be the most
politically effective demand to attract millions of people, enable
building a powerful mass movement and effectively contribute to a defeat
for U.S. imperialism?  As far as i know, few knowledgeable commentators of
any political view fault the choice of "Bring the Troops Home Now!", which
was popularly shortened even further to "Out Now!"

        Given the organizational strength of the U.S. anti-Vietnam war
movement even at its height, a serious effort to mobilize the most massive
possible national demonstration took at least several months of work.
Some effort needed to be invested in continual movement self-education and
educational outreach to convince more people to join the movement.
Effective movement-building work required time to build a conference open
to any/everyone concerned to debate and democratically decide what would
be the most effective next steps in building the anti-war movement.
General society-wide seasonal patterns of behavior in the U.S. - including
some consideration for natural factors like the climate - led toward an
optimal movement-building rhythm of major demonstrations each fall and
spring.

        As i was drawn into the anti-war movement, i observed that the
political struggle going on among the leftists was between the SWP which
wanted to keep the focus and the political pressure on the U.S. government
to get out of Vietnam and their critics and competitors who accused the
SWP of having a 'single-issue fetish.' The strongest opposition to
building a relentless, uncompromising anti-war movement came from the
reformist left, particularly the Communist Party, which constantly tried
to dilute the anti-war movement into a 'let's negotiate' multi-issue
context suitable to providing support to the Democrat Party.  Then there
were those i considered to be ultraleft, a variety of Maoist and other
groups, who counterposed building a multi-issue, explicitly
anti-imperialist protest movement (usually featuring a call for victory to
the NLF) to building the strongest possible, most massive anti-war
movement to get the U.S. out of Vietnam.

        These strategic political differences were also manifest in rather
predictable differences over tactics, including over the tactics involved
in/at protest demonstrations.  I agreed with the SWP that having a million
or so people in a mass demonstration calling on the U.S. government to get
out of Vietnam was more effective than having 10,000 people doing civil
disobedience.  It seemed to me that many of those who were determined to
engage in civil disobedience had a more personal than political agenda -
they were engaged in trying to prove their personal moral or revolutionary
superiority.  It appeared to me that the opportunity to persuade several
thousands to do civil disobedience depended heavily on the fact that many
others had worked to bring hundreds of thousands to a massive
demonstration.  At that time in that context, i didn't think that
focussing on civil disobedience actions was the way to build the most
effective possible anti-war movement.

        Dayne

*(the SWP still is a revolutionary socialist organization of course - no
matter my current evaluation of it)


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