From: "cwright" <cwright-AT-21stcentury.net>
Subject: Re: AUT: Re: no war but the class war, again
Date: Tue, 1 Oct 2002 17:20:16 -0500


Steve, Scott,

While I am leery of this discussion, I want to pipe in a few thoughts.

I am not, obviously, of the opinion that the Left can 'train' the workers,
as Scott says.  This too much assumes exactly the kind of understanding that
the working class is an object, primarily economic, which the
communists/anarchists fight for hegemony over with the capitalist class.
Its just ass backwards in some ways, since, as always, it begs the question
of 'who trains the revolutionaries'.  At that point, we are back in the land
of 'scientific Marxism', the vanguard, etc.  Its a slippery slope from those
little assumptions to either sectarian Leninism or populist politics (which
some like the SWP really are.)

It seems to me that Scott's idea of mentioning other things done by other
workers in response to war is not a bad idea, rather than telling our fellow
workers what 'they should be doing'.  Concrete proposals where we are
involved in a struggle are, IMO, a completely separate matter, as is a
person-to-person conversation about 'what can we do'.  A propaganda piece is
simply not the place for that.

The task of such a leaflet is exactly to point out the politics of the war.
We can't tell people what to do in any meaningful way, but we can help them
understand why this war business makes them nervous, or better yet, why
would the governments actually want this.

I had an interesting conversation yesterday while spending 8 hours in a
public health clinic waiting to get an appointment for another health
clinic.  I spoke to a guy who worked the fishing boats until recently, and
he said that as much as he loved the 'America', he really felt that we were
acting towards the Middle East like England towards Northern Ireland.  Now
keep in mind, he couldn't remember at first who he was thinking of regarding
Britain.  He more sort of said 'You know, those guys who bomb the pubs.'  He
said he took the side of the Irish on this one, aka he felt that 'America'
had no business messing with the Middle East and that, in spite of being a
horrible and inhuman way to respond to the US by killing innocent people,
the response was based on the US and the big powers treating the world as
their private chessboard.  (Note: I am cleaning this up a bit to condense
it.)  I really didn't have much to say to elicit this either.

So is there a way to grasp this idea that it is not "our government's"
business to mess with people around the world, but in a way which begins to
challenge, thoughtfully, in straightforward, jargon-free language, that this
is something we should not participate in and which we should fight against?

Can we find a way to draw connections, which I spent the next bit trying to
do, to get him to see the links between capital and war and capital and our
common 8 hour stint in a public hospital clinic and his suffering from
Hepitits C from working in the fishing industry (which he said is VERY
common)?  Now maybe NWBTCW is appropriate to the everyday language of
England, but it is not here and while snappy in concept, would lose most
people here in language.

All this without pretending that I could tell ths guy what to do, or anybody
else in the clinic.  Believe me, if they would be ready to respond to a
demand to take over the clinic, or the workers to strike and provide
alternate health care practices, I doubt that I would have better ideas than
they would.  But unlike a lot of the folks there (maybe any on that day), I
know how a lot of the pieces of the puzzle fit together and that we have a
common set of needs, which may be expressed indirectly or may not (the need
for better medical care in the US and the need for better medical care in
South Africa, for example, where both of us, esp. in regards to AIDS
treatment, are being shafted by the pharmaceutical companies.)

So in partial contrast to Scott, I would say that trying to 'train' people
or tell them what to do is in fact the most abstract, banal thing we could
do.  But in partial agreement, to point to what other workers are doing, to
try and find ways to get information about how to contact those other
workers or ways to set in motion some contact, that would be something which
we (sometimes) can and should do.  It takes seriously the idea of
'circulating struggles' as part of our task, without the idea that we (the
Left) somehow really know 'what is to be done'.  For example, if I know
union activists here who are against the war (and who are not already
Leftists of the recruitment/sectarian sort), why shouldn't I try to get some
exchange of information with comrades on this list who also know such
people?  Sure, we don't trust the unions, hell, we may even think they are
completely institutionalized, but it is worth connecting some workers
together if NWBTCW and other like-minded groups helped build bridges.  In my
experience, that is not quickly forgotten among workers and is seen as very
practical and comradely.

Cheers,
Chris
----- Original Message -----
From: "Scott Hamilton" <s_h_hamilton-AT-yahoo.com>
To: <aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, October 01, 2002 9:26 AM
Subject: Re: AUT: Re: no war but the class war, again


>
> Steve wrote:
>
> we're not just a bunch of leftist robots who
> > keep on
> > repeating exactly the same actions again and again
> > and again.
>
> You are if you keep up the level of abstraction your
> latest leaflet shows. It's the easiest game in the
> world to say that 'revolution is the solution'. The
> problem is that no one wants to play the game. I very
> much wish they did, but in the meantime some training
> is in order.
>
> Whether NWBTCW likes it or not, it is part of a
> Popular Front which leads workers to the feet of Ken
> Livingstone and sundry Bishops. This PF will either
> block effective anti-war action, or be transformed
> into the vehicle for effective anti-war action on a
> terrific scale. Everything depends on the strength of
> the workers who are part of the PF. Will they look to
> the UN and God to stop the war, or will they take
> matters into their own hands? You can't blame them for
> not having done so yet, given the defeats thay have
> suffered over the past two decades, the historic
> weakness of the British working class, and the
> misleadership of the Labour left and the centrist SWP.
>
>
> Revolutionaries like NWBTCW must play a role in
> breaking workers inside the PF from the class
> collaborationist leadership of Livingstone, Benn and
> co. They cannot do this by trying to conduct mass
> conversions to the cause of revolution with abstract
> platitudes. They can only do it by advancing tactics
> and demands that are the *concrete expression* of
> revolutionary politics, that are stepping stones
> rather than obstacles to working class independence
> and unity. NWBTCW's leaflet advances not a single
> demand or tactic in opposition to the leadership of
> the march. Nor does it deal with the dramatic events
> in the two weeks leading up to the march, when the
> vehicle for invasion looked like changing from the US
> to the UN.
>
> I don't propose just saying 'strike against the war'
> again and again: what I say is that concrete examples
> of anti-war action by workers need to be raised (ie
> the general strike in Namibia last year, the blacking
> of Israeli goods in Norway) and concrete actions be
> proposed. For instance, there must surely be potential
> for the political opposition of the Firefighters to
> war on Iraq should be fused with the economistic
> strugle of the Firefighters with the Balir government.
> And there is such a rich British heritage of
> anti-nukes direct action against military
> installations. Alright, most of it was led by the
> middle class, but it is still salvagable, to say the
> least. And NWBTCW should work with the revolutionary
> groups that also fight against the PF nature of Stop
> the War (ie, off the top of my head, Workers Power,
> Red Action, and the CPGB - PCC)
>
> Having said all that, I do think the NWBTCW leaflet
> provides a snappy read on the broad nature of war. I
> might pillage it for the AIC! My view, though, is that
> this historical and theoretical stuff should be the
> icing, not the cake.
>
>
> Cheers
> Scott
>
>
>
>
> --- Antagonism <antagonism1-AT-yahoo.com> wrote: > Scott
> writes:
> >
> > > Why does
> > > NWBTCW not advocate anti-war strike action and the
> >
> > Because we've already done that many times before in
> > different
> > ways, eg,
> >
> >
> http://www.geocities.com/nowar_buttheclasswar/nwbtcwleaflet1.html
> >
> > and we're not just a bunch of leftist robots who
> > keep on
> > repeating exactly the same actions again and again
> > and again.
> >
> > cheers
> >
> > steve
> >
> >
> > ====> > Antagonism
> > web: http://www.geocities.com/antagonism1
> > email: antagonism1-AT-yahoo.com
> > mail: Antagonism, BM Makhno, London WC1N 3XX, UK
> >
> > __________________________________________________
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> >
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>
> ====> "Revolution is not like cricket, not even one day cricket"
>
> __________________________________________________
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