Re: [Marxism] Soli's sins [was: ISO's conference]

[chegitz guevara <absynthe@xxxxxxxxx>]

On 5/22/09, Joaquin Bustelo <jbustelo@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

>  From what chegitz says it seems he probably has a hyper-propagandistic,
>  "bearing witness" approach to politics.

I'm not sure how you get that from what I've written. It seems more
likely that you've introduced this as a strawman.

>
>  Chegitz says, "The purpose of socialists isn't to organize workers simply to
>  get better contracts." But the relationship of the socialist movement to the
>  union movement has ALWAYS included that as a component.

And what part of the word *simply* escapes you? In other words, the
purpose of socialists is to do more than just get better contracts.
You're quite adept at the use of English, so I find it rather unlikely
that you were unaware that this is what I wrote and meant.


>  Whatever the merits or demerits of Soli's "rank and file strategy" in the
>  labor work, I am convinced it is far superior to preaching, i.e. "talking
>  socialism on the job."


It doesn't have to be one or the other. One can find a way to do both
that isn't either abandoning socialist politics or simply being
socialist Jehovah's witnesses.


>  Obviously, I completely disagree with chegitz that the green party is just
>  one more bourgeois party no different from the Democrats and Republicans. I
>  think the major Green and other independent campaigns of the past few years
>  indicate that there are the beginnings of a base for a party of working
>  people.


You write of how socialism appeals solely to youth and intelligentsia.
I think if you look at the Greens, you will find exactly the same
groups being attracted to it. I see no indication of any movement by
the working class towards the Greens. It's always been a petty
bourgeois party and it will remain a petty-bourgeois party.


>  Moreover THIS -- not the simon-pure programmatically pristine
>  "socialist election campaigns" -- is what actual motion toward political
>  independence by working people looks like.


To what end? The moment that the Greens show electoral viability,
either the Democrats will shift to the left, bringing the Demo-Greens
back into the fold or the Democrats will collapse into the Greens, and
the Greens will become the new/old Democratic Party. That's the way it
has always happened in the U.S., due to our first past the post
electoral system. There will never be three major parties at the same
time.


>  I also disagree with chegitz's attitude towards independent candidates. His
>  dismissal of sister Cynthia McKinney as "a woman who claimed that 5,000
>  prisoners were taken from New Orleans after Katrina and secretly executed in
>  the Louisiana bayou," shows he is probably from the section of the
>  population that would find a claim that the US government committed genocide
>  against people like him to be absurd. Sister Cynthia is not from that
>  demographic.


Let me get this straight, you think that 5,000 prisoners were taken
from Nola and executed in the Louisiana swamps? You think that this is
a perfectly reasonable and valid belief? Where are the bodies? Where
are the missing people? This government couldn't even keep the murder
of 18 Iraqis quiet. Where are the National Guardsman telling the world
about what they did? If you say some whacked out conspiracy shit, you
better have proof.


>  If Chegitz ever visits these parts, he will find sister Cynthia is held in
>  the highest regard by people  like the leaders of the immigrants rights
>  movement, of the fight against the death penalty, the most progressive
>  elements in the labor movement, etc.


It doesn't change the fact that she's spouting crackpot conspiracy
theories. These days, she's also associating with some pretty bad
people. She's got a lot of people on the left snowed, primarily
because you have people who rush to defend her no matter what insane
things come out of her mouth.


>  I'm not sure that Chegitz is right in saying that having a high percentage
>  of Blacks and Latinos at some event "would be truly impressive" if this
>  hadn't been consciously organized. On the contrary, what I find impressive
>  is that it *was* consciously organized. And I hope that in addition to
>  discriminating against whites and males, the comrades also took into account
>  that it is often necessary to discriminate against anyone born before Jimmy
>  Carter was president.


You are deliberately misinterpreting what I wrote, yet again. The
issue was not that they discriminated against white males. The issue
was that they did so, and then claimed on that basis that Solidarity
was remarkable for being able to have a high percentage of women and
people of color. They stacked the deck and then congratulated
themselves on the results. In other words, what I was pointing out was
the disingenuity, not the discrimination.

The difference between this artificial "attraction" of people of color
and the Miami May Day Alliance, which is still a majority people of
color, organically, is quite different. We don't restrict people from
joining on the basis of color or gender. We just happened to attract
revolutionaries of color and women. I will allow that being in Miami
might make it a little easier, but Chicago and Detroit are also cities
with minority White populations, and I still hear from comrades
located there that they can't attract people of color to their
organizations.


>  I'm sorry to hear that Chegitz believes himself to have been "expelled" from
>  Soli.


One day I was a member, the next I wasn't. I hadn't resigned yet, so
what do you call it when a person's membership is dropped by an
organization when they hadn't resigned? I wasn't even a full month in
arrears on my dues, despite being unemployed.

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