[Marxism] re: Some comments on Stan Goff's post

["M. Junaid Alam" <alam1@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Joaquin wrote:

"Still, I think it is important that people adopt a position in favor of
creating a united revolutionary socialist left and do propaganda around
thus perspective. Not exclusively regroupment although regroupment is
likely to be a part of it. But another big part of it is
"transformation" of the left, which I find it easiest to think of as a
"recomposition" of the left, in the direction of Blacker, more Latino,
younger, more female, etc. The issue isn't "diversity" but empowerment
and the need for the revolutionary left to approach issues "from below,"
from the standpoint and position in society of the most oppressed and
exploited. What in the bad old SWP says I used to call a "proletarian
orientation.""

This sounds fine on paper, but I think it assumes a one-sided view of
why the Left isn't already more black, for instance. That view being,
the Left alienates and ignores blacks. I don't think this is true.

Joaquin wrote earlier:

"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."

I think this is a very strange way of putting things. The reality is
that the most active and serious leftists are predominantly white and
middle-class. At the same time, among the most oppressed people are
blacks. And yet, paltry few blacks are involved in radical politics. To
paper over this contradiction, Joaquin says that if an alien looked at
radical leftist publications he would automatically assume they are from
the black community. Well, whose fault is it, really, that such is not
the case? I always have a big problem with these self-flagellating
approaches that romanticize whatever sectors aren't radicalized or in
the middle of a revolution just this moment, and then blame everything
on leftist activists.

In my opinion, there is nothing cohesive or radicalized whatever about
America's black population at all. Even as polls show Bush enjoys only
2% support among blacks, this has meant nothing in the way of
self-organizing for an alternative program, party, or even a set of
ideas. Which is why Democrats can always conveniently count on the black
vote no matter what.

Then there is the matter of Katrina, in which white bureacrats in
almost so many words told blacks to go fuck themselves and drown. Where
was any organized, "cohesive" response to this in the black community?
Hell, where was any response at all? You had the usual Sharpton/Jackson
pair uttering a few words and a lot of pissed off people, but hardly
anything in the way of a national response. This, in a situation where
tens of thousands of blacks had their lives destroyed. Frankly, that is
beyond pathetic. In France, a couple Arab kids get electrocuted on their
way to escaping what they thought was a police chase, and the immigrant
population set France of fire. That's not cohesive but hell, at least it
is a response of some sort.

I don't see any point in ignoring the giant elephant in the room here,
which is that black America is involved in fratricide,  a cyclically
self-destructive culture of drugs, violence, anti-intellectualism,
misogyny, and commercialized glorification of the worst aspects of human
behavior. I don't see the advantage of ignoring this and lionizing some
kind of non-existent mass of advanced black revolutionary groups or
blocs. I don't know what the hell's going on in Atlanta Joaquin, but
nothing like that exists anywhere in Boston or New York. Nothing like
that exists on Malcolm X Boulevard or Bed Sty Brooklyn, which is 99%
Black and working-class.

In my opinion, any alien who came to America and saw radical literature
would *not* automatically assume it was from the black population,
because he would know better than to assume a 1:1 correlation between
oppression and radicalization. That is one shibboleth we need to let go
of, the idea that every time you beat a man, he only becomes more
resolved to resist; sometimes when you beat a man, he just ends up
beaten. There is no rule that says there's an inverse relationship
between economic wealth and radicalization across all time and space.
Clearly there is much more to it than that, otherwise half of Africa
would be in open revolt right now. More to the point, the US radical
movement would be "disproportionately Black", instead of what it is,
which is mostly white and disproportionately *Jewish* of all things.

I think this self-flaggelation of left activists gets out of hand here.
We're criticized for being out of touch with white middle America and
droning on about freeing Mumia and Haiti and not being class-specific
enough. Then, we're accused of ignoring and being out of touch with the
most oppressed sectors of society. That's contradictory. All the while
what's seemingly forgotten is that we live in the most reactionary and
right-wing developed country in the world. A level of cynicism,
anti-human, anti-socialist ideas so fully adopted and embraced by the
general population, and so prodigously produced by the intellectual and
propaganda factories, that it is silly to ignore and blame everything on
the handful of Americans who, unlike most of their peers, at least care
enough to try to change things. Everyone else's complacency and
paralysis isn't our fault.

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