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

[Josh Saxe <joshsaxe@xxxxxxxxx>]

Joaquin-
You didn't respond to my last post, I'm not sure why.  I'm going to
restate what I said somewhat differently.

If we think about what the U.S. left perspectives were in the 1968-74
period, I'd say they were on the one hand that a Second Reconstruction
(implying social-democratic equality for blacks and oppressed
nationalities) was actually possible in the mid-term in that period,
together with or as a step towards the defeat of U.S. imperialism and
socialist revolution or at least a new wave of large scale challenges
to capitalism as big or bigger than the 1930's.  This was supposed to
happen in the 1970's or 1980's.  In any case there were immensely
optimistic perspectives almost universally accepted amongst
revolutionaries of this generation.

The last 30 years have seen these perspectives fail miserably - it's
hard to exaggerate the extent to which they have failed.  This, not
the stupidity of this or that left group, nor the structure of the
groups, or the programmes of the groups, is the _KEY_ to understanding
what people on this list complain constantly about - sectarianism,
disunity, etc.  It overshadows the whole fucking thing, it has
structured it and pushed it forward inexorably.  Not only did the
Second Reconstruction fail, there is in many ways more immiseration
in, say, black and Native American communities now than then (although
there were certain achievements that remain as well of course).  On
the international level the United States defeated the Soviet bloc and
defeated what were essentially small scale challenges to its hegemony
in Central America - China backslid towards capitalism, and now the US
invades Eastern Europe and the Middle East with impunity.  It would
have been a nightmare scenario for anyone of the 68-74 generation and
indeed I'm sure it has been for those who have lived through it.  What
else but fragmentation, ideological incoherence, etc, could have
realistically have resulted?

My point here is that with each successive step the reaction took, the
left fragmented and became a more confused place, with more and more
ridiculous and off-the-wall perspectives, from the "revolution is just
around the corner" trope to "we are living under fascism" themes to
"Khomeni" or "fidel" or "Marcial" are the latter day Lenin.  These
were the result of the struggle of organizations built during an
optimistic wave of social movements attempting to salvage themselves
during a prolonged period of reaction.  With the US pullout from
Vietnam in 1975 and the dying away of a mass base for anti-imperialist
politics that had fed the growth of groups like the SWP, many
organizations went into crisis.  The SWP struggled to regain its
bearings and took a hard landing with their self-destructive turn
towards industry, while hundreds of members melted away.  Other
organizations including remnants of SDS and the broad student radical
movement, parts of the Marxist/black nationalist left turned towards
terrorism or went into the union bureaucracy and the Democratic Party
or later Rainbow Coalition type formations.  Others went to places
like Nicaragua and South Africa as new arenas for political activity
given the impasse of the project of building a revolutionary left in
the U.S. - or they gave up the party-building project and joined
organizations like CISPES - I'm not saying this to criticize this work
but to point to the fragmentation and divergence in perspectives.

I think this historical context is totally essential, otherwise we
degenerate into what are often idealist discussions that occur here
that really are mainly just bashing of the actually existing surviving
New Left revolutionary groups.  These groups are not freeze dried
remnants of the past -if we look at the past 30 years of far left
history we see revolutionaries having reinvented htemsleves numerous
times, but never around perspectives that bore fruit or led to success
so that they could have led to building any kind of genuinely
effective organization or real regroupment around a pole of
attraction.

To me a materialistic approach to the whole thing would lead us to
emphasize that the basic problem is that all perspectives, of every
group, have failed.  Joaquin, from that angle, you ahve nothing on any
other group, because your perspectives, too, have failed to produce
any significant success as far as I know.  Most groups have not grown
over the past 10 years, they have shrunk markedly.  Nobody in the
revolutionary has led a major struggle of the magnitude that it
threatened the momentum of the capitalist offensive, nobody has built
a large base in an oppressed community, the best any group has done is
group together people around protest marches, not real social
struggles and class upheavals.

If a group could achieve any success of even minor historical note in
the U.S. they would form the basis for the beginning of a regroupment.
 So this needs to be our focus - finding a way to be relevant and
successful.  Whoever does this will do 100x more for regroupment than
any intellectual writing articles about unity.  The ISO has done this
to some extent - if they grew to 3 to 4 times their present size we
could see a regroupment around the proven successful strategies of
that organization.  Then there maybe would be a split between the ISO
types and those interested in a priority for organizing amongst
working people, who might regroup around one or a few organizations
that proved themselves in this regard.

Anyways I think without a _breakthrough_ left unity would be a unity
of decaying groups that have gone through years and years of decay and
defeat. It's no solution all.  A bunch of failed approaches and
perspectives put together just means a colossal failure, a mass of
bickering entrenched egos.
Josh

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