Date: Wed, 06 May 1998 13:15:58 -0400
From: "Charles Brown" <charlesb-AT-CNCL.ci.detroit.mi.us>
Subject: Re: M-TH: Something for Nancy...


Nancy,
    I agree that in general initiatives , referenda,
constitutional amendment campaigns we must stress.
  But as a side issue, that campaign in California
now to hinder unions from spending money in
politics, including initiative campaigns, scares
the hell out of me. In part because it would
 undermine the peaceful revolutioary means
you describe below.
    I will forward some articles by David
Bacon. (He lives in Berkeley).

                             Chas.


>>> <brumback-AT-ncgate.newcollege.edu> 05/05 11:09 PM >>>
Bob Malecki writes:

Women do not have the social power or clout to
>carry out a victorious social revolution and without that there will not be
>liberation for women..It will take the vast army of proletarian man and
>women dragging all of the oppressed behind them to really make the
>possibility of women gettin their freedom. All else is a eutopian pipedream.

The majority of the working class is women. If you add to that the other
oppressed groups of capitalism, people of color, gay people, old and young
people, etc., you get much more than a majority.

I point out this demographic fact because I believe that the only way a
revolution will take place in the USA is through the bourgeois electoral
system. It is impossible to imagine overthrow through armed force here.
Already in many states we have the initiative system, where people can vote
on issues. If an initiative were put forward to tax profits, not people,
with provisions for neighborhood groups to decide how to spend the profits,
that in itself would be an element of revolution. Revolution by electoral
politics happened in Chile in 1972, but was quickly snuffed out thanks to
the intervention of the world's greatest imperial power. Only the USA could
have a successful revolution through electoral politics.


>well, try going to my homepage and pushing on the "Spartacist" button and
>then the "Women and Revolution" button that will get you started. And
>blaming "Socialism" for what has happened to women in China, the ex-Soviet
>Union or any other of the states where capitalist property relations have
>been overthrown is in fact pointing the gun in the wrong direction. In none
>of these states except the early years of the Soviet Union do "real*
>communists take any responsibility. In fact what you are critizing is
>Stalinism which has nothing to do with Socialism or Communism....Comparing
"socialism" to the crimes and politics of Stalinism
>and the Social Democracy is like comparing night and day as being exactly
>the same..

I did go to your home page as instructed but I didn't see the journals,
although I suppose I could have emailed for them.

The section on women was concerned mostly with abortion -- which of course
we both realize is important but not the whole picture.

But I think that instead of blaming Stalin for everything that went bad,
communists should look at their own program to see what they have got that
will address the issue of domination itself -- something about overthrowing
the unequal division of power between those who make the decisions and those
who carry them out. If there is one insight communists should adopt from
anarchism, it is this: that power corrupts. Patriarchy is only one
reflection of this unequal division of power in class society, and it has
been with us for 5,000 years. We can't expect domination to go away by
itself, even if the material base is removed, and we can't just say, oh the
working class the working class, because the working class today is as
chauvinistic as the ruling class -- maybe even more so, since they don't
have much but to feel that they are better than women. There have to be
specific measures to see that the social relations of the dominators and the
dominated are overthrown, and that everyone is recognized as inherently
having the right to participate in decisions that affect their lives.

Cheers,

Nancy



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