[Marxism] Just what part of 'Workers of the World, Unite!' didn't you understand?

[Joaquín Bustelo <jbustelo@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Robert Montgomery says, that Socialist Alternative does antiwar work to
his liking so that justifies their existence. "Why should they exist as
a separate group? Seems like begging the question here, Joaquin," he
says.

I will try to answer as clearly as I can. For revolutionary Marxists,
the creation of a political group is a class question. It is also a
political question. What is the *class* question? Quite simply, whether
it promotes the unity of the working class or not. You know, what it
says on the cover of the Communist Manifesto. It is a political question
because the unity that the working class needs is one that helps it find
its voice, become a self-conscious political force.

One more carnival barker selling his (and, yes, it is usually his) own
brand of socialism patent medicine is not what the U.S. working people
need. And I really don't care how much they are "best builders" of this,
that or the other antiwar coalition, nor how much of the leafleting and
postering up they do.

The absolute complacency with which the U.S. left simply accepts further
fragmentation and division among revolutionary socialists with a shrug
of the shoulders as if to say "what else is new" if not "the more the
merrier" is astonishing.

And here I must say the white, Anglo left, because the sentiment is
*quite* different among the most conscious fighters in the communities
of the oppressed nationalities, which is one of the big reasons why
Blacks and Latinos radicals do not as a rule join predominantly white
so-called multinational groups.

ANY calm, dispassionate look at the U.S. political scene, even once over
very lightly, will tell you that the most cohesive and radicalized
section of the population is and has been for an entire historical EPOCH
the Black nation. If you just showed up from some other planet and
looked at the web sites and proclamations of left groups, your guess
would be these are all groups based in the Black community, or at least
disproportionately Black, for that is what radical sentiment looks like
in this country.

And if you were to ask another question, what is today the most
oppressed and exploited sector of the working class, the one denied
political and civil rights, shunted to the worst jobs, who the bosses
can fire at will and not even pay them their back wages, who are
denounced and persecuted as unpersons, that would be the mostly Latino
immigrant population, especially unauthorized immigrants.

I have no idea what Socialist Alternative's social composition looks
like, but I don't see anything on their website to suggest that they are
different from most left groups in being insensitive to this anomaly.

This group calls itself "Socialist Alternative." If you ask them why
they will probably say because they represent the socialist alternative
to capitalism. Please, give me a break. This one, unlike the 27 other
flavors is *really* the alternative to capitalism? Bullshit. They're the
"alternative" not to capitalism, but to the 27 other groups.

Each of the groups, in and of itself, may have all sorts of positive
attributes, this one may have done some fine work in the labor movement,
that one in the student movement and so on. TOGETHER they may make a
fine and harmonious beginning to a real Marxist workers party;
INDIVIDUALLY they are inevitably COUNTERPOSED to each other and don't
always succeed in avoiding sectarian and factional attitudes and
maneuvers against other groups.

Worse, the new person approaching the revolutionary socialist left is
met with a cacophony of voices, some insisting that 4+6=10, others
denouncing them for deviating from the time-tested 5+5 formula, while
still others bray on the absolute truth of 2+8, 9+1, 3+7, 4+6 and so on.
And in the middle of this madhouse you have folks like my comrades in
Soli muttering it is all much of a sameness while the Sparts point out
the answer is really 11 and the SWP says it is the wrong question.

And everyone is okay with this?

Don't you think we may have a little problem with branding and market
share? Maybe if we told people that we were "associates" of the one and
only Truly Revolutionary Party, Walmart-style, instead of "members," it
would make a difference. How about if we offer a 10% discount on their
first year's dues if they join before Xmas, with no payments until
February, and double your money back if there's no revolution by 2017?

And while you think about that, let this thought linger in your mind: is
it REALLY about brand recognition and market share? Did you really set
out to join the noble race of traveling salesmen? Is Willy Loman the
model of the American revolutionary?

"Something there is that doesn't love a wall," wrote the poet Robert
Frost,

That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast....

Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down. I could say 'Elves' to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me~
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."



________________________________________________
YOU MUST clip all extraneous text before replying to a message.
Send list submissions to: Marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism