Re: [Marxism] oops! I meant to send that off list. My bad!

[Walter Lippmann <walterlx@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Well, as for myself, I might was well say that I joined the YSA in
1962, the SWP in 1967, departed involuntarily from the SWP in 1983,
founded SA in 1984 (lasted one meeting) and was a member of the FIT
from 1983 to 1988. I have been without any organizational affiliation
since then. As of the week of my expulsion trial in 1983, I was then
paying $30.00 sustainer weekly. And I paid it in full, up to the 
final meeting I attended.

And I also heard the same workerist and sectarian nonsense in the
Socialist Workers Party which remains a Marxmail staple. It took me
awhile after my involuntary departure before I began doing some of
the research to learn what the roots of the workerist sectarianism
which afflicted the SWP, and other sections of the left, came from It
wasn't until after leaving the SWP did I actually read that editorial
in THE MILITANT published a year after the triumph in which it said
that the "main danger to the Cuban Revolution was in its own
leadership." http://www.walterlippmann.com/catc.html

That being said, I continue both to have no regrets for my many years
spent in the Trotskyist movement, and to honor what was decent and
functional in that heritage. In its time, the SWP was the only left
party which supported Malcolm X. In its time, the SWP was the only
party which supported Robert F. Williams. It failed to appreciate
how far Dr. King had moved to the left, and tended to counterpose
King and Malcolm rather than trying to see how they were moving 
toward a convergence. The SWP's opposition to the African National
Congress is one of those legacies which world Trotskyism clings to
with relentless intensity. Today other Trotskyist and neo-Trotskyist
tendencies carry that unfortunate banner. I joined the SWP and YSA
in the first place because I felt they were the best defenders of
the Cuban Revolution, which was the basis of my own radicalization.

I have ALWAYS considered Joseph Hansen to be, as we say in Cuba, "en la
misma trinchera que nosotros" (in the same trench as we are). Hansen
genuinely supported the Cuban Revolution, AND remained a Trotskyist,
but not a sectarian perfectionist, as most of such types are today, 
which we see exemplified in the virulent hostility which some of what 
Fidel properly calls "super-revolutionaries" express toward leaders
like Venezuela's Hugo Chavez and Bolivia's Evo Morales.

This is one of the reasons why I've been so busy scanning Hansen's
comradely discussions of Cuban foreign policy and guerrilla warfare.
I still read and listen to and learn from Hansen. His work should 
be better known internationally than it is.

There is still much which can be learned from the historical legacy
of the SWP, and from the writings and ideas of Trotsky and of the
Trotskyists. In her own way, I think that Celia Hart is trying to 
make a an informed and meaningful synthesis of Trotskyist ideas and
those of the Cuban Revolution. That's been my sense of her all along,
and why I took it upon myself some years ago to begin to bring her
ideas out into the English language. Hers is an authentic voice of
the Cuban Revolution, and so it's important that her ideas get a
broad international public hearing. 

With all of its frustrations, Marxmail makes it possible for some
of these familiar discussions and debates to take place in a modern
context and on an international plane, thanks to the Internet.


Walter Lippmann
Los Angeles, California

=================================================================
LOUIS PROYECT wrote:
Not only did I used to hear workerist nonsense for 5 years in the 
Trotskyist movement, I had to pay $30 per month for the privilege.












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================================
WALTER LIPPMANN
Editor-in-Chief, CubaNews
writer - photographer - activist
http://www.walterlippmann.com
================================

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