File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1998/marxism-international.9804, message 94


Date: Thu, 9 Apr 1998 20:49:10 -0400
From: neil <74742.1651-AT-CompuServe.COM>
Subject: M-I: Jesse Jackson  & reformism


dear friends,

Jesse Jackson and the Rainbow  Coal.
outfits have always been part of the Democrats
"left-posturing"  wing. A sly method of the bourgeoisie
to sound  out politically 'populist' when necessary to 
confuse workers , suck them up  to the ballot boxes ,
and then spit them out agains when all is said and done
and create even  more passivity.
 

Revolutioanry  marxist groupings have a task to unmask the
Jackson type charades for what they are and not tail behind 
them as fake socialist groups and others do. Of course this can only 
seriously be taken up as part of the participation in existing class
struggles
and mass motions of the exploited , oppressed. by capital.
As concerns Jackson specifically,  had already played his 
hand well in this in 1984 (and earlier in the 70s)--while Rainbowing
 for  Mondale and the Democrats--and not  initially in 1988, 
his  Dukakissing,  as Louis P. has implied. 

But having worked at the time  around the movements against
the US led bloody  assaults on Latin American  workers struggles which
were boiling in the 80s, this was difficult, and beacause of the
reformist forces, CISPES, PORs , etc direct  line to the the US liberal
bourgeois purses and equipment , media ,etc. it was a very 
uphill battle in which marxist forces got the ears and sympathies 
 of many good  workers and activists, but overall got politically/
organizationally  clobbered in the majority of the campaigns.
then, there was huge problems gaining political clarity .. 
So the refromists won the leadership-political hegemony --and
 imperialism  ended up chewing up the many times  valourous efforts 
of the toilers  in that round in Central america--and here at home too
,in the capitalist offensive economically  ,I should mention.

But it does not mean the struggle  efforts were in vain, but thet we should

criticize in the spirit of overcoming our shortcomings .to prepare for
bigger new battles as capitals crisis deepens worldwide. Over
years the marxists -left trends will emerge again  from within and without
new battles and class strife , and maybe next round the countervailing
forces will face wider class struggles that they may not be able to
get under controll as they have in the past period.  

But as part of this combatting refromist tends and their trojan 
horse lines and directions in the new emerging struggles, against
welfare cuts, downsizings, polluted cities, for health care 
for workers, speed-ups, SSI slashings, etc., the tasks of
communists in the struggles will be to build the confidence
and militant mood and fighting sensibilites from below and
promothe new mass organizations, political and industrial 
to fight the class enemy and its state.

As in the next period the bourgeoisie has less "reform' manuevering
 room given the growing depth of fall general trend of world falling
profit ratios, competitions of other big  capitals in the post Cold War
scrambles , and overall  slowdowns  in the accumulation process.
The next period will open up new chances- and  new problems too 
in building up a communist-left  force  to oppose the derailments
by the utopian/professional   reformist  trends, who are at least
objectivley speaking, in the interest of capital..

Neil
 for communist-left web
http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/3303


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