Re: [Marxism] The low point of the CNN-You Tube debate

["Joaquin Bustelo" <jbustelo@xxxxxxxxx>]

Jscotlive writes: "But today there is no draft, is there? And actually
antiwar sentiment  spread through the ranks as a direct result of the sheer
number of bodybags that were coming home married to an antiwar movement that
grew in both size and militancy as the war went on. This is in
contradistinction to the antiwar movement today, which has contracted as the
war continues."

I think this sort of analysis is too superficial to be useful. The GI
antiwar radicalization was part of a mass youth radicalization that was an
international phenomenon, and intimately tied in with the anticolonial
revolution internationally and the Black Liberation Movement within the
United States.

There may be no draft today, but economic compulsion means the army's makeup
isn't all that different at the level of ground troops. In addition, the
army provides one of the few ways that young undocumented immigrants
graduating from high school can get legalized. 

As for body bags, at the height of the Vietnam War, fatalities were running
about 100/week. Taken as a whole, during the Iraq war they've been 15 or
20/week, although since "the surge" started  casualties have been
significantly higher. But the army in Vietnam was 550,000 troops, the one in
Iraq has fluctuated between 125,000 and 160,000, roughly one-fourth the
size. And in relation to the number of dead, there are today a much higher
number of seriously wounded and maimed for life.

They way Vietnam was fought on the U.S. side, with a draft, meant that for
the overwhelming majority of troops, you were there one year, and then it
was over. Millions went through Vietnam. The way Washington is fighting the
Iraq war, with some units in their third deployment to the theater, I would
be surprised if the density of casualties of all types --dead, seriously
wounded and unfit to return to duty, and lightly wounded -- per 1,000 troops
were not much HIGHER than in Vietnam.

What really tore apart the army in the field in Vietnam was the knowledge
that they were being asked to die, at best for negotiating advantage in
cutting a deal with the VietCong, at worse for a lie. It was AFTER
"Vietnamization" was announced by Nixon in mid-1969 that the mood of the
troops became mutinous and fraggings started to climb exponentially.

*  *  *

We should not exaggerate the breadth of the antiwar movement in the first
years of the movement in the 1960's. They key difference from today was its
(relative) political independence, something the antiwar movement inherited
from the Black movement. 

Hard as it may be to believe, the media then was even MORE monopolistically
controlled than it is now, because there were only a handful of outlets with
national reach - basically the three networks (neither PBS nor NPR existed),
the UPI and AP wires, Time and Newsweek, the picture newsmagazines Life and
Look, already dying then, and the New York Times (which, while it was not
circulated nationally in any mass way [the "national edition" wasn't
launched until 1980], was tremendously influential among the "power elite")

The actual turning point in the war, it is now generally recognized, was the
Tet offensive at the beginning of 1968. The U.S. military has always claimed
they creamed the commies, but as Stan Goff likes to say, after von
Clausewitz, victory in war is not a matter of tactical outcomes but of
political ones.

President Johnson's approval ratings collapsed in the wake Tet, but not so
support for the war as such. That did not happen until late 1969, after the
start of "Vietnamization" and the first, token U.S. troop withdrawals. And
the majority opposition became consolidated only with the invasion of
Cambodia in May 1970. 

*  *  *

In thinking about the doldrums of the antiwar movement today, I do not think
it is useful to draw stage-by-stage comparisons to the Vietnam War. There
were plenty of down times then, too. Typically there might be one big
demonstration between major (congressional or presidential) elections, like
the March on the Pentagon in 1967; the Moratorium in the fall of 1969; and
the April 24, 1971 march on Washington. There was nothing like the sustained
series of mass protests in the run up to the war in the fall of 2002 and
beginning of 2003. But there were also mass explosions of protests of other
types, like the Black ghetto rebellions and the May 1970 student strike,
which we don't seem to have nowadays.

*  *  *

One factor to consider is the growth of "professional activism" in the
non-profit sector. 

On the Internet I found an "almanac" of the "independent sector" [501(c)3,
501(c)4, and religious institutions) that is quite revealing. As of 1977
--at least five, and more likely ten years after the whole cooptation
through nonprofits scheme had started-- there were 715,000 people working
for nonprofits primarily in the field of "social and legal services," and
the non-profit sector as a whole, including schools, health services and so
on, was 7.3% of the labor force, but the "social and legal" part was less
than 0.9% of the labor force.

By 2001, employment in this sector had been growing more rapidly than either
government of business employment, at an annual rate of 2.5%. And the group
with the greatest percentage growth was "social and legal services" which
close to tripled in employment from 715,000 to 2,140,000, and represented
more than 1.6% of the civilian non-farm labor force.

Most of those jobs are NOT "political activism" jobs, not even partly, but a
significant minority are. And closely related to this is the growth of the
lobbying/advocacy/electoral sector, which absorbs and co-opts people in a
similar way.

*  *  *

This sector has to be viewed in relation to the strength and savvy of the
organized social/radical/socialist left. Today there is no one playing the
role that the NAACP, the SCLC, and SNCC did in the 50s and 60s, certainly
not with that kind of weight, in the Black community. That is, whether with
moderation or radicalization of tactics, fighting in an uncompromising way
for the right of Blacks.

There are groups more analogous to that in the Latino community, especially
in some local areas. But those groups now confront national apparatuses
financed by corporations and foundations --like the National Council of La
Raza-- that (however they conceive of it) systematically subordinate the
fight for the rights of the Latino community to the economic and political
interests of their corporate sponsors and Democratic Party politician
allies.

In the 60s, you had a plethora of local collectives, action committees,
circles and other forms of grassroots organizations, some of which
consolidated and became very substantial (the Crusade for Justice in
Colorado; CASA-Hermandad in LA and other cities; La Raza Unida Party which
started in the small town of Crystal City, Texas; and so on, drawing these
examples from the history of the Chicano movement in the Southwest). They
had a relatively open field, compared to things now.

Many groups back then, it is true, were not really deeply rooted in
communities but rather were radicals coming together in ephemeral
formations. But the more successful --beginning with the NAACP and other
organizations of the Black community in the South-- did have strong
community roots and functioned as volunteer --not staff-- organizations.

*  *  *

A lot of attention --at least in the circles I ran in-- was paid to
macro-politics in those years; and it seems to me this continues to be the
case. Perhaps the focus needs to shift to micro-politics, the politics and
dynamics that take place at a very immediate level, at the level of the
small base group or circle. 

I think part of the reason for the current lackluster antiwar movement is
that it doesn't have this sort of base, the self-organized from below
circles of activists and their interconnection with broader circles of
concerned people, whether these are constituted as a formal organization or
not.

One of the things to think about is what that means in this age of the
internet, long distance calls at no additional charge, and cheap airplane
tickets.

Joaquin


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