Date: Mon, 03 Mar 1997 10:22:27 +1000 (EST) From: Gary MacLennan <g.maclennan-AT-qut.edu.au> Subject: Re: M-I: benighted workers? >> Their petty-bourgeois leaders make every effort to deprive them >> of the "experience of ruling for themselves, thinking for >> themselves, acting for themselves." But the workers have other >> ideas. They don't always win. But their class interest and >> instinct pushes far ahead of the petty-bourgeois spirit of >> compromise with capital. >> > >Louis: The big problem right now is how to construct a leadership that >will not compromise. Your answer is to recruit cadre to a nucleus of a >self-declared vanguard. I advocate the path that Lenin took. That is to >construct a party based on Marxist principles, broadly speaking. This >would include both people who hold to your "state capitalist" views as >well as those who differ. If Lenin had tried to build a revolutionary >party with the same sort of sectarian and rigid guidelines as you and >every other Zinovievist does, there would have been no revolution in 1917. > This is the list at its very best. There is a question of substance and it is being debated sharply but with the correct amount of mutual respect and courtesy. My heart is with Walter Daum here. I long to see the petty bourgeois betrayers given their just deserts. But in all honesty my experience of left groups has been just what Louis P. has described. His solution is an interesting one. He wishes to recover a pre-Zinoviev Lenin. The magnittude and importance of this task is truly impressive and it should be acknowedged publicly. However I have my doubts about it. My own solution is to atempt to build broad cultural/political solidarity. I want to try and rebuild the moment of progressivism. to pour life and water back into the swamp. Then of course the hard men of history, and Lenin was one of the hardest, can come forward and denounce us swampies and build their revolutionary organisations. But they do not have the water to swim in at present. This they cannot see. The more left they become; the more discipline they strive for, the harder they make their cadre, the more they exacerbate the problem which is one of the total marginalisation of Left wing ideas, solutions, actions etc. There is a classic example here in Tony Cliff's turn to Trotskyism in the 80s. Just when he needed to keep the ISO broadly based he responded to the rise of Thatcher by imposing what Louis P. terms Zinovievism on his organisation. This meant the eventual purging of the liberterian/syndicalist element of his party. Here in Australia it eventually meant that people like me were thrown out because we were "right wingers" and a seriously disturbed person by the name of Ian Rintoul eventually seized control of ISO with the explicit connivance of the British SWP. The truth is that I desperately want to join an organsiation but I will continue with what I see is united front work. Thus in the local Brisbane Anarchist paper I am doing all I can to get them to call for a vote for the DSP (ex-SWP - America) in the Brisbane local elections. But such is the weight of history and sectarianism that it is a real struggle to unite the Left in any way. I will also try and work with Rob S.'s New Labour Party, but they will have nothing to do with "Trots". I deplore this but the fact does remain that Trotskyism has a history of raiding and slashing and burning and wrecking organisations and fronts to get a few members. I myself have no doubt that eventually the working class will turn. The current events in Albania prefigure to my mind the shape of future politics. However it is only if there is a tradition of radical left progressivism, that these upturns will take a political route that will lead to a serious challenge to Capital. regards Gary --- from list marxism-international-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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