Re: [Marxism] Towards A Left

["johnaimani" <johnaimani@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

<<Message: 13
Date: Thu, 08 Jan 2009 22:22:00 -0600
From: Carrol Cox <cbcox@xxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [Marxism] Towards A Left
To: "marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx" <marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Message-ID: <4966D0E8.6B906707@xxxxxxxxx>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8

The scattered leftists and  leftist groups in the U.S. are entirely
helpless to bring any pressure on t he u.s. government or to affect the
slaughter now going on in Gaza...There are probably 10s of thousands,
perhaaps 100s of thousands of u.s.
residents who more or less see and condemn u.s. foreign and domestic
policy; the kind of people who would belong to or actively support A
Left if one existed. But only scattered individuals and small groups
exist.>>

I post below a letter from a comrade I received today (and apologize
for the 'long line'):

----- Original Message ----- 
From: Zeno Storm
To: johnaimani
Sent: Thursday, January 08, 2009 5:16 PM
Subject: RE: [Anarchist-Marxist Economics] CNBC Video: December ADP 
Report-Down 693,000 Jobs


john-
what forms of organization do we need to prepare for this? the republic 
workers had a union. luckily i guess it was a pretty far left union (as far 
as they go in this country). last night, here in oakland, as you know there 
was a small-scale riot in response to the Oscar Grant murder. this incident 
demonstrated to me what i already knew theoretically: that without some 
organization, spontaneous reactions tend to devolve into some pretty fucked 
up shit. that shit last night was fucked up. while i saw embryonic class 
consciousness in terms of the direction the "riot" went (toward a more 
middle income neighborhood (mostly poc though) and away from the ghetto) and 
in the choice of cars to be smashed (eg newer model lexuses and beamers over 
older hondas)), the whole thing was led by small "cadre" of street youth to 
whom smashing cars is no anomaly. the anarchists and maoists who provided 
the bullhorn and sloganeering, who could be said to be ex(/in)citing the 
action, were not able to direct the destructive impulses toward more worth 
targets. nor were they able to broaden/deepen the political meaning of the 
protest beyond the narrow issue of one dude getting killed by one cop and 
general police racism (which everyone already knows).

in other words, there is no organic connection between the radicals and the 
"masses" that would allow for the influx of somewhat sophisticated concepts 
of who the enemy is and is not, and what kinds of solutions are necessary to 
solve what kinds of problems. what components do you think are most crucial 
to making those connections? to many rioters, this was all just fun and 
games, legitimate cover for stealing and smashing shit that belongs to 
people a couple rungs up on the class scale from them (mostly immigrant and 
poc owned small business and mixed race apartments neighborhood where the 
per person average income is probably $35k per year). dont get me wrong, i 
think rioting is an important aspect of rebellion, but i think its crucial 
to point out its honest nature and recognize how inadequate it is. but 
really im just using last night as a concrete example, like the republic 
sit-in, to launch the question to you of what serious marxists and 
anarchists can do to infuse the working class with the tools required for 
dealing with 700,000 layoffs in a single month. you might think this 
one-directional way of putting the question "infuse the working with..." is 
problematic, and im aware of that... maybe its better to ask how to 
integrate radical projects more with the working class and 
"lumpenproletariat." i know this is the question every radical would like to 
have the magic answer to, and i dont expect you to have the magic answer, 
but im curious about your practical theory, since you obviously got the 
theoretical aspect down pretty well. in the name of praxis, what practice 
follows the theoretical underpinnings of what you're putting foward with 
anarchist-marxist?

i work in something between manufacturing and service, and work on a 
piecework basis for not what comes out to about $13/hr. I feel very nervous 
about the layoffs, and i ask myself - damn, what would i do if i lost my 
job? i consider my self pretty damn radical, and pretty well read on the 
history of working class organizing from the bottom and the top down 
perspectives. but i still dont have a very clear action plan of how i would 
solve my own individual crisis if i lost my job, let alone how i would 
contribute to organizing a response to that capitalist attack.

im far more interested in your answer to this question than in something 
like lil joe (whose views i have much respect for in general) with his labor 
party thing which is not a bad idea per se, but its like point w and we're 
still at point c. or to use another example of something that i think is not 
bad, but inadequate: RAC, which is  good, but its like  point b and we're at 
c.  in other words theres a big gap between the micro-level stuff like 
distributing free food to help people survive, and the macro-level stuff 
like create a new political party. between point b and point w there's a lot 
of practical forethought that we need. i figure someone like you, who 
bridges the anarchist and the marxist might be just the person to fill at 
least some of those gaps.
zeno

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: johnaimani@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
To: anarchistmarxisteconomics@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx; rac@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Wed, 7 Jan 2009 21:06:32 -0800
Subject: [Anarchist-Marxist Economics] CNBC Video: December ADP Report-Down 
693,000 Jobs


(JAI:  With the continuing drop in the domestic jobs located in the 
manufacturing and construction sectors of the economy, the service sector is 
next to show rapid and accellerating job losses.  Job losses were projected 
to be 500,000.)
(The ADP National Employment Report® is a measure of nonfarm private 
employment, based on a subset of aggregated and anonymous payroll data that 
represents approximately 400,000 of ADP's 500,000 U.S. business clients and 
roughly 24 million employees working in all 19 of the major North American 
Industrial Classification (NAICS) private industrial sectors. 
http://www.adpemploymentreport.com/)

Video at http://www.cnbc.com/id/15840232?video=987877914




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