[Marxism] The low point

[Jscotlive@xxxxxxx]

It seems to me Jscotlive doesn't GET IT, and I don't mean doesn't get it  in
some superficial way, I mean completely and profoundly doesn't get  it.

"Support the troops" by itself isn't a slogan anyone on the left  uses, it is
an ENEMY slogan whose CONTENT is a loyalty oath and gag rule  against
criticizing the war. 

"Support the troops, bring them home  now" is NOT a slogan directed at the
troops AT ALL. The target audience is  the civilian population at home and
especially friends and relatives of  people in the armed forces whose
sentiments the government and right-wingers  try to manipulated to shore up
support for the war.

But also --let's  get real folks-- all this stuff about the slogan being
"reflective of an  unwillingness to mount a meaningful challenge against the
ruling class"  strikes me as buffoonery. To mount "a meaningful challenge
against the ruling  class" in a nation of 300 million people takes a bit more
than a few hundred  or a few thousand radicals.

It takes powerful social forces, cohered in  structures/movements independent
of the ruling class, to mount "a meaningful  challenge." To talk about it
absent such forces, as if it could be brought  about by words alone, is not
serious.

Reply:
 
Here we go again. Slogans are absolutely vital to any movement in terms of  
providing that movement's orientation and in terms of how it reaches the masses 
 (Lenin), not only at home - and this is what you and other do not GET - but  
overseas, particularly in this case the Middle East. Of course it takes 
powerful  social forces, cohered..blah, blah, blah...but in the absence of such 
forces are  we to just sit on our hands and act as those spectators watching 
slaves being  slaughtered in the Coliseum as Che described? Or are we to 
attempt 
to challenge  the received truths of the establishment, military and political, 
as much as we  are able. The antiwar movement (and again I repeat) has 
clearly contracted in  both the US and the UK. I mean, this is self evident, 
each 
having been  essentially taken over by their respective liberal wings. But all 
I 
hear on this  list are the same dogmatic Marxist ABC's focusing on form 
instead of content.  The contraction and weakness of both movements is down to 
both 
objective and,  wait for it, because you ain't gonna like it, SUBJECTIVE 
factors. Each took a  right turn after Feb 15, 2003, when they should have 
turned 
left, thus  contributing largely to their demise.
 
At last year's Cairo Conference, representatives from Hezbollah, Hamas and  
the Iraqi Resistance each pleaded with delegates representing the movement in  
the West to adopt slogans in support of the Arab Resistance, in order to help  
inspire their people on the front lines against imperialism.
 
Why do we do this? Simply to move the movements away from its current  status 
as a de facto 'loyal opposition' to something harder and more  homogeneous. 
As of now movements in both the US and UK are led and largely  filled by those 
motivated by nothing more than moral outrage. In order for the  movement to be 
truly effective, it must needs attract those motivated by  material 
necessity. This means workers, poor blacks, whites, immigrants - this  will and 
can 
only be done by connecting the war overseas with the war on the  working class 
and the poor at home. This is not being done to any large degree  at present.
 
This is our target audience, not merely the friends and relatives of troops  
in the field, an assertion that doesn't just strike me as buffoonery, but IS  
buffoonery.
 
Finally, and again, whatever we do must be tailored to what is in the  
interests of the INTERNATIONAL  working class and oppressed, not merely  those 
existing in our own backyard.
 
The unconscious chauvinism that exists among US members of this list is  
beyond belief, it really is.
 
J
 
 




   
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