Date: Thu, 20 Nov 1997 09:29:39 -0800
From: Mark Jones <Jones_M-AT-netcomuk.co.uk>
Subject: Re: M-I: Farewell, 1956.


Charlotte's cry from the heart resonates with anyone who has lived the half-life
of a would-be communist in one of those decayed, rat-infested, half-submerged
hulks -- the CPs of western Europe and north America.

Why the hell am I doing this? must be the most frequent thought while going thru
the motions at almost any party activity. It is a hard road to hoe, to find the
answers. 

Of course, these parties were infested with police spies and the leaderships
were and are either salaried policemen or the broken and corrupt who have long
learnt to bend the knee at that most swinish of altars, organised labour. To
envisage a career in a trade union, even a lay career as a steward, is a
heart-wrenching enough decision, one which almost inevitably entails broken
families and slammed doors everywhere else in life. It is also to roll your
sleeves up and immerse your arms in shit. It is to work alongside some of the
most perverted, cynical, worthless, predatory and traitorous characters you will
ever know, and it is to feel a sickening, shameful sense of relief if you're
ever allowed for a moment into the society of decent, ordinary middle-class people 
living worthwhile lives in wholesome, fruitful obscurity, with none of your own
frustrations and gut-wrenching insecurity, none of your ever-growing bile and
dislike of your generally-venal fellow-activists. To envisage such a career *as
a paid up communist* is simply to don a hairshirt, and deny yourself even the
meagre rewards which absorption into a labour bureaucracy brings (sometimes not
so meagre, but they are always the only rewards slaves hurling flowers
under the wheels of a triumphal chariot can hope for).

Of course, the once or twice in your life you are involved in something
big, the breath of the people suddenly fills the sagging sails, and you 
feel vinidcated and so-so-right, might compensate. That, and the sense 
of historical vindication that comes from being a marxist.

 Yes, it is hard not to be moved by Charlotte's predicament.
Which honest father in his senses would advocate such a life to such an
obviously conscientious, kindly and intelligent daughter?

I would, for one, and be proud of such a daughter, Charlotte.

Yes, the party is shit. Full of cops and they've zeroed in on you by now, 
because they know an honest communist when they see one, and nothing is more 
dangerous than this virus of truth, a stainless example to all of us. 
I doff my hat Charlotte and hope you never change.

I'll tell you something else.

Nil illegitimum carborundum. Don't let the bastards grind you down. Never give
up. Never surrender. FUCK them all, the weaselly, cowardly toerags, the vermin
infesting our movement. I once heard a school cleaning lady give me the best
definition of a scabrous labour bureaucrat-type-- 'I call them kippers,' she
said, 'because they're gutless, spineless and two-faced.' She said that on a
picket line which said trade union leader, the pompous scab, had just crossed. 
We won our strike anyway. Fuck them all.

I'll tell you what socialism is, Charlotte, when you get right down to it: 
SOCIALISM IS TAKING MONEY AWAY FROM RICH PEOPLE. PERIOD.

If you're a communist, you are a member of God's aristocracy of labour, you're
the best there is, and eveyone knows it in their hearts, whatever they say,
whatever stones they throw. And they know what THEY are, and what they've done, 
and why they've done it, and that's why they hate a communist in such a specific
way, because you show them each breath you take what it can be to be human, you
are a standing reproach to the cop-outs and easy accommodations with one's
conscience, made a hundred times a day between a charity box they drop a dime in,
and a new career-move.

One more thing, Charlotte: don't waste your time trying to make mass parties.
Lou Godena, who is an all-right guy, is still all wrong about this one. 
We don't need to worry about the  Miss Adlers. They'll be alongside the rest 
of us when they're good and ready, not before. As Charlie Marx said, 'he whom
you seek to persuade, you acknowledge master of the situation'. To seek to
persuade the Miss Adlers is merely to buttress in them all the false
consciousness which led them wrong to begin with.We'll still be here
when they need us, never fear.

This may seem a perverse thing to say, but I believe it's true: our problem is
always, and will always be, keeping the wrong people out, not getting the right
people in. If they're not cops, they're the psychotic, paranoid fuhrer-types
who run the sects. Often they're both, as you might expect. 

The people are suffering. They need our help, and we have to sacrifice. That's
how it is, don't ask me why God made it this way but She did.



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