[Marxism] Some comments on Stan Goff's post

[Joaquín Bustelo <jbustelo@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

My good friend and comrade Stan Goff, in commenting on my earlier post
on recomposition of the Left in the United States, noted that I
presented as my paradigm, so to speak, a broad alliance or fusion of
pretty much the entire spectrum of left groups not oriented to the
Democratic Party that are actually active in social movements, unions,
the Black Liberation Movement and so on.

And with the typical expressiveness that makes him such fun to read, and
such an effective propagandist, he said something to the effect that
some of those groups he wouldn't piss on if they were on fire, and added
that I was overlooking the social movement left. I agree with Stan that
refoundation, the rebuilding of a socialist left with the potential of
becoming worthy of the name, has to include a big component of people
currently not in any group but very much immersed in the actual
movements, and in a certain sense that is really the whole point. (And I
also very much share his reaction to some left groups, and suspect that
there is significant overlap between his shit list and mine.)

Adelina Nicholls, the central leader of the immigrant rights movement in
Atlanta is representative of the most advanced layer of the unaffiliated
activists that Stan refers to. In a talk she prepared for the Black
Radical Congress held here last July, she emphasized this need. Speaking
of an alliance of the Black and Latino communities, she said:

"Our demands are the same: living wage, jobs for all, education,
healthcare, housing; but not only our demands are the same, also our
struggles against any type of discrimination and for the recognition of
the dignity of every human being.

"Many progressive, religious, and left groups have embraced our demands,
but unfortunately this has not been able to create a collective body,
these efforts have not been able to bring unity among groups.  Our most
progressive people are fragmented, and do not communicate with each
other, thinking than their ideological position is better than the
other....

 "Many groups do good work in one or another sector. Our task, our
challenge is to find a common political identity that can articulate all
social actors, uniting all those voices and struggles that can offer a
new political alternative."

I don't believe we can afford to ignore or discard the various
revolutionary-socialist groups because they are at the heart of the
problem of fragmentation of the Left, including and perhaps especially
the fragmentation that takes the form of atomized cadre working in
isolation or with a handful of close collaborators in a specific sector
or movement.

This, the "structured" left and the social movement left, IS the cadre
that exists, it is a product of history, to say, we have to write off
WWP, ISO, PSL or whatever selection of groups you might make is not
realistic, and there's simply no point to continuing with the current
state of affairs which has already proven to not be able to attract into
the structured left many, many people like Nicholls.

This historically accumulated yet dispersed cadre either has to be drawn
together into the beginnings of a real revolutionary socialist movement
in the United States and those elements that are unwilling, or unable,
especially of the structured left, have to be isolated politically so
that they can no longer play the role they do today. And I assume what
would likely happen is a little of both. The best elements even in
groups that are quite sectarian or factional will eventually be drawn to
the unity project, even if by a tortuous path, the others will
increasingly become irrelevant. 

In other words, we need to foster a separation between the positive
movement and propaganda activities, on one side, and the sectarian and
factional maneuvering, posturing and competition, on the other, because
right now ALL our groups combine BOTH to one degree or another. 

I don't believe that separation can successfully be carried out as long
as the revolutionary Left remains as fragmented as it is right now.
There is too much space for groups to do both things, and *not* pay a
price for sectarianism and factionalism. 

As to where to begin, I don't see an alternative to initiating what in
the first instance will almost inevitably have to start out as a
regroupment or alliance of a few existing organizations, possibly only 3
or 4, those groups that *already* have abandoned vanguardist pretentions
and seen the need for a recomposition or regroupment of the existing
left not as a dream greatly to be desired but as a necessity that flows
from our immediate political situation.

The reason I leave the CPUSA and Committees of Correspondence out of my
calculations at least for an initial round or two is that my impression
is that those comrades are so focused on their strategic orientation
towards the Democratic Party that reaching an agreement with them for
practical work would be extremely difficult.

On this, the example of Stan and his friends, who decided to just put
aside the elections issue, isn't, I don't believe, a solution to the
problem. The Democrats are at the center of those comrade's strategic
thinking, that orientation shapes their tactics in the social and
protest movements and is the framework and focus for most or much of
their practical work. This means an alliance that includes them at this
stage would be largely a forum for sharing disparate experiences, and
only marginally a place to draw together and try to coordinate and
cohere the work of the various components. 

I think groups need to begin acting NOT with the idea that we should
achieve a higher level of unity, if possible, but with the understanding
that unity is today a central political task to which other tasks need
to be *subordinated,* as well as the most realistic and direct road to
advancing towards certain strategic objectives (for example,
"transformation," a "structured" left that is much more rooted among the
oppressed nationalities, that includes a higher proportion of women, and
that is much younger).

Joaquín


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