[Marxism] The (Real) Resistance & Its Continual Betrayal

[Debordagoria <phantasmagorias@xxxxxxxxx>]

Another wonderful post by Senor Bustelo. Am I a
hopeless pessimist for thinking that much of the
history of this genuine social left, this brave
resistance from below, is a tragic tale of its
continual betrayal by those opportunists who would
assume the mantle of "leader"? Is this not the sad
theme of Zinn's People's History? How much of this
energy of suffering humanity, how much of the noble
struggles of the downtrodden, the work of the Ella
Bakers of the world, has been manipulated and
channeled to make the careers of politicians and
others who would sell out those whose sweat has built
the world?


--- Joaquín Bustelo <jbustelo@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Because there is another "left" we should think
> about. The left that
> arises "from below," not from an UNDERSTANDING of
> social relations
> (exploitation, oppressions, patriarchy, white
> supremacy, class, gender,
> nationality) but from those social relations
> themselves, the "left" of
> those who really don't even necessarily want to BE
> part of the left, but
> just ARE, the social relations that ensnare them
> leaves them no choice.
>
> The two most significant social movements of the
> XXth Century in U.S.
> society sprung from and were rooted in this OTHER
> left. They were the
> organization of unions symbolized by the rise of the
> CIO and the Civil
> Rights Movement. And if we look at how those
> movements arose and
> functioned, something that stands out is
> *organizing* in a very
> *organic* way. "Valga la redundancia" --the
> redundancy is on purpose, as
> we say in Spanish.
CLIP
> Community or workplace-based movements aren't like
> that. They're based
> on relationships, they focus on the most immediate,
> felt needs of the
> affected group, they're the result of years of what
> in Latin America is
> called "ant work." The task is NOT finding those who
> are willing to
> move, the task is moving those who are there, in a
> specific time and
> place and circumstance.
>
> And that is much more difficult, yet that is what
> must be done for this
> isn't like poker, and if we don't like the working
> people history has
> dealt us, we just turn in the hand and ask the
> dealer for new cards.
>
> Revolutions are made by parties --whether called a
> movement, army,
> league or something else-- that fuse BOTH kinds of
> lefts, or more
> precisely, put the services of our kind of
> intellectual left at the
> disposal of the social left, fuse US with the actual
> *social movement.*
>
>
> I mentioned in another post that two weeks ago I was
> at an event in
> Durham, modestly called the Revolutionary POC
> Workshop. And actually I
> did more than attend, I was one of the organizers.
> But being there, I
> realized what it was really based on was the BLM and
> most of all SNCC.
> Because the layer of Black comrades and cadre who
> were there were part
> of a network or collaborations and relations that
> goes back 40 years.
> And I want to say especially women organizers. And
> that is the granite
> foundation on which some of us in Soli and other
> groups are trying to
> grope our way to a collaboration of mutual learning
> and support with a
> Black-Latino alliance as its axis that we think can
> be effective in
> changing some things. Including perhaps the broader
> left, but that will
> be a byproduct, because we're doing it for
> ourselves.
>
> That SNCC was the movement of the Black
> intelligentsia. But it linked up
> with something deeper and broader, the Black
> Liberation Movement, which
> grew out of, or really was the right name of the
> movement that initially
> was called the civil rights movement, to the point
> that the primary work
> of the former SNCC organizers now scattered here and
> there throughout
> the South, and I repeat women organizers because I
> do believe this is
> very much a gendered issue, is "community
> organizing."
>
> A lot of the heart and soul of the civil rights
> movement were the county
> branches of the NAACP. And a lot of that organizing
> was done by Blacks
> associated with the labor movement and the rise of
> the CIO. Rosa Parks
> did not act alone. A man named E.D. Nixon bailed her
> out. He came from
> the brotherhood of sleeping car porters. Rosa Parks
> acted with lifetimes
> of effort behind her at the right place, at the
> right time. And so when
> they held the meeting about her case, the problem
> wasn't the empty pews
> in the church that seated a few hundred where that
> meeting was held.
> That was the problem ED Nixon and his friends in the
> NAACP feared. The
> one they found was the thousands of Black people who
> could not get INTO
> the church. And that problem was the key to their
> victory.
>
> And what was the NAACP in such places? It was the
> vanguard. It was the
> solid, conscious, disciplined core around which the
> masses of the
> oppressed and dispossessed finally cohered. It was
> that section of the
> Black community that pushed forward all the others,
> including a young
> preacher from Atlanta with a gift for oratory,
> Martin Luther King, Jr.
>
> But it wasn't MLK that organized that infrastructure
> around which the
> movement cohered. And a lot of the most effective
> organizing of those
> branches, the gold standard, was done by a woman
> named Ella Baker. And
> the more I learn about her story, and the story of
> those she influenced,
> and the story of those who were influenced by those
> she influenced, the
> more I think that if there's going to be a
> revolution in our epoch in
> THIS country, the story of that revolution begins
> with her. And the many
> other hers that followed her example.
>
> If you want to build a vanguard party, and I say
> this in all
> seriousness, because I do believe a successful
> revolution requires it,
> don't just go to Russia and Lenin. Because Lenin
> didn't build that
> party. Lenin provided the political clarity such a
> party needed, but the
> work itself was done by hundreds and thousands of
> Russian Ella Bakers
> and E.D. Nixons and Rosa Parkses. And they did so
> against savage
> repression, without NGO's and nonprofits, without
> foundation funding,
> while holding full-time jobs and "meeting on Sundays
> over fried
> chicken," as one veteran of the Black Liberation
> Movement described the
> participation of his parents in the movement in the
> 1950's and 60's.
>
> And LEST WE FORGET, people like unassuming Ella
> Baker organized the
> NAACP despite and against a nearly 100-year campaign
> of genocidal
> terrorism with few if any parallels in history. THIS
> is a left that some
> might be tempted to call the REAL left, because it's
> where the rubber
> hits the road, where the resistance --and I use that
> word advisedly, and
> in its full meaning-- meets the repression, the
> genocide, and overcomes
> it.
>
> This is the left that surrounded the Hotel Theresa
> when Fidel visited
> the U.N. at the beginning of the revolution, the
> left that put an end to
> U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War by the --there's
> a perfect word in
> Spanish for this-- "ajusticiamiento" (literally,
> doing justice onto) of
> officers, i.e., fragging, the left that brought down
> Jim Crow and
> American Apartheid and won the right of Black people
> to vote by turning
> the other cheek, singing we shall overcome, burning
> down Watts and
> telling Lyndon Johnson: the ballot or the bullet.
>
> A lot of our attitudes are shaped from a viewpoint
> derived from reading
> people like Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky, Che;
> hearing Fidel or Hugo
> Chavez speak. And it seems like this OTHER left of
> which I speak, the
> "social" left, just sorts of falls into the laps or
> a Fidel or a Lenin
> because these dudes are, like so totally brilliant.
> But that's precisely
> the *opposite* of what happened. It's not the masses
> that rise to the
> level of the intellectuals, it is the intellectuals
> who rise to the
> level of the masses, who finally understand
> *themselves* as the
> reflection on the level of ideas and strategy and
> the clash of
> ideological currents of the REAL movement which is
> *social* and not
> ideological.
CLIP



                
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