Date: 04 Jul 97 21:49:31 EDT
From: jonathan flanders <72763.2240-AT-CompuServe.COM>
Subject: M-I: Mass Organizing


 >> Trotskyism has never understood the importance of such intermediate 
groups. During the antiwar movement, it viewed the thousands of peace 
groups as fertile grounds for recruiting to the party but the minute any 
of these groups began to take on a political life of their own and
consider broader questions of the class struggle, they became
"opponents". This is the reason the SWP hated SDS. It was not
controllable, nor was it a good place for recruitment. <<Louis P


  I think Lou is getting carried away with generalizations about the CP 
and the SWP. This summation of the Vietnam anti-war period tactics of the
two groups falls short in my book.

  The difference  between the SWP and the CP then revolved around how to 
mobilize people. The SWP wanted to maintain a focus on  stopping the war,
the CP tended toward trying to establish a multi-issue organization that 
saw the war as just one of many issues, rather than the central issue 
that could put millions in motion. Yes, the limited single-issue front 
favored by the SWP proved to be fertile recruiting ground, but I suspect 
the CP made hay in its favored groups as well.

  The SWP had plenty of people at the time capable of motivating and 
organizing people. Fred Halsted and Peter Camejo come to mind right off 
the bat.

  Fred Halsted's book "Out Now!" is the best defense of the SWP's 
perspective at the time. I don't know who in the CP wrote a history of 
Vietnam anti-war movement; I know Dave Dellinger, the radical pacifist 
often aligned with the CP wrote one.

  Lou correctly points out that in a revolutionary period like that of 
Nicaragua in the eighties, all kinds of intermediate formations require 
the attention and direction of a revolutionary leadership. I don't think 
that a direct analogy can be made, however, between eighties Nicaragua 
and the sixties US. The Sandinistas had to try to influence all the 
organizations that sprang up after they took power. The SWP and the CP of
the sixties US could pick and choose, and create groups if necessary, in 
the anti-war struggle. Such are the luxuries of opposition. 
   

Jon Flanders



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