Re: [Marxism] The SWP (USA) and its continuing significance

[Jim Farmelant <farmelantj@xxxxxxxx>]

On Sun, 5 Jun 2005 12:22:55 -0400 (EDT) Walter Lippmann
<walterlx@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
> If no one took the SWP seriously, serious people wouldn't
> discuss or debate its significance. Keeping Malcolm X in
> print, selling books about the Cuban Revolution give the
> SWP a presence on the political left and a certain actual
> weight which continue despite the group's hostility toward
> living struggles. The Socialist Labor Party, by contrast,
> which prepares and publishes better-written analyses of
> current events in their monthly paper, THE PEOPLE, really
> is a group with no influence outside its immediate circle.
>
>

 If what you said was true, then people like Hitchens,
Horowitz, Cooper et al. would be falling over themselves
to quote all those articles that appeared in The Militant,
which could be interpreted as lending support to the
Bush Administration's Iraq strategy (you remember all
those articles which you and others on this list, obsessed
over the apparent endorsement that the SWP was giving
to Rumsfeld and company in regards to Iraq).  The
fact that Hitchens, Horowitz and company don't feel
compelled to write articles of the form,
"Even the Marxist SWP says that . . .", should tell you
something, which is that the SWP, despites its
past glories, is lacking the heft to influence the
anti-war movement, either positively or negatively.
You can bet that if there was any indication
that the SWP could exert such influence, then
Dave, Chris, and Mark would be rushing to quote from
the pages of The Militant until the cows came home.


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