File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1997/97-01-11.141, message 29


Date: Fri, 10 Jan 1997 00:56:40 +1000
From: rws-AT-comserver.canberra.edu.au (Rob Schaap)
Subject: M-I: Draper, Engels and Sects


Many thanks to Stephen Philion for quoting Hal Draper:  

'Marx implemented a basically different conception of
the relation to trade unions (from the sects).  Socialists should act as a
loyal left wing of the class movement, not an alternative counterposed to
it; they should start with the working class as it is and where it is in
order to change it; they should become the best militants for the limited
aims of the movement-as-is...at the same time, through this association,
they seek to push the whole movement upward to higher levels of class
struggle commitment and consciousness by means of the lessons of
experience, all without giving up or hushing their own full views or
ceasing to criticise mistaken or ineffective polices.'

[This I LOVE!  Pardon my ignorance, but who's Hal Draper and where's the
best place to start reading him?  And I gotta admit, I had fallen prey to a
widespread marginalisation of Engels (in my experience anyway), but this
list has fixed that.  I never knew how much he'd written - and how well
worth reading it was!]

Rob. 




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