Date: Thu, 19 Mar 1998 13:27:59 +0100
From: Hugh Rodwell <m-14970-AT-mailbox.swipnet.se>
Subject: M-TH: Feral revolutionism


What I want to see on the list is burning hatred for capitalist
exploitation and the repression it produces, in all its forms.

If people are driven by a sufficiently strong desire to get rid of
capitalism and its states as soon as possible, they'll listen to each
other.

When it's a matter of reporting what's happening to dock workers, then it's
good to get the report from dock workers -- authenticity has advantages of
immediacy and eye-witness impact. But the real politics starts happening
when black women, gay men, English dock workers, Ulster Catholics, Kosova
Albanians and Belgrade bus drivers link up their personal experiences of
repression and generalize them into programme, organization and action
against imperialist capitalism and the bourgeois state.

It wasn't the social identity of Marx or Lenin or Rosa Luxemburg that made
them what they were, but their ability to explain the oppression that was
crippling people's lives and to create political ways of doing something
about it.

And it's far better for people to speak their minds and air any prejudices
they might have than to shut up and try and appear politically correct. If
they're moving in the right direction and want the defeat of capitalism
badly enough, their prejudices will be knocked out of them as they find
themselves working side by side with those they used to be prejudiced
against. Intentions matter a lot!

Just look at the progress made with the involvement of women in struggles
like the Great Miners' Strike in Britain in 85-85 and more recently in
Liverpool with the very successful organized effort of the Women of the
Waterfront. Not to mention the Hillingdon women fighting for their own jobs
and interests.

And anyone who's heard the women of the docks strike criticizing the
bourgeois women of their bosses for not being interested in hearing the
woman's angle on how the strike was affecting families and children, or
seen Bosnian workers attacking other Bosnians for trying to put a Muslim
slant on what's happening there, will know that "identity" is a political
question that is forged in struggle and doesn't depend on any essence of
origin.

So let's have more feral homoeroticism from those who like that sort of
thing, and more feral revolutionism from everybody!

Cheers,

Hugh


PS Not everybody sees seductiveness in the same sort of thing -- Dennis
would be thrilled to see me wiggle my hips, Yoshie would be left cold.
That's why I was interested in finding out what Yoshie considers to be
politically seductive. Surely it's not just everything that's not a
turn-off?

PPS I still miss mimi putting her cat shit in the corn flakes of Middle
America!




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