From: MD575151-AT-aol.com
Date: Fri, 5 Jul 1996 02:31:00 -0400
Subject: Re: Labor Party and our actions concerning it.


In a response to Kevin,
  
   I, Mike, write,

> people are fighting for
>socialism,
>> weather they know it or not.
>

Kevin writes;

>	No, I don't believe that at all. Plenty of worker's fight for more
>power, but aren't sure about the merits of centralized planning and how
>that could feasibly take away their power. 

   That doesn't matter.  Awareness is a small, and irrelevant, factor in the
overall historicle factor.  A catapiller is not aware that it changes into a
butterfly, yet is changes none the less.  Homo-erectus had no idea he was
tranforming into, one day, homo-sapien.  And even now we have only a slight
idea of what we are going to be in a million years.  Humans are no different
then any other object of life.  I am not at all anthro-procentric.  The human
mind, and what it thinks, has little say in the process of change.  
   The transition to a planned, centralised economy will most likely come
about because it is the only solution to the capitalist system.  Once the
workers realize that there are problems with high wages, full employment, and
nationalized medicen (etc. etc.) withing the free market system, they will
have no chioce but to enact a planned economy.  It does not matter weather or
not anyone realizes that now.  People will realize that when they are forced
to deal with reforming, or dismantling, the capitalist system.

Kevin writes;

>Fighting for more power in the
>workplace does not make one a socialist revolutionary. Lech Walesa fought
for
>more power in the workplace against the Polish government, was he fighting
>for
>socialism? 			

   Exactly.  That is just what I said.  The workers who currently fight for
socialism are not socialist, and there for not socialist revolutionaries.
 You can think that the capitalist system is the greatest thing since private
property, but if you even fight for one concession, say a safer work place,
you start a chain reaction of events that are hindersome to capitalism.
 Capitalism likes to operate in a free, unrestricted manner.  The attitude,
or goals, of the reformer or revolutionary does not always have anything to
do with the outcome of his actions.  All individuals are one big block of
evolutionary mass that changes according to material conditions.  What goes
on in our minds has little effect on the material conditions.  (as a matter
of fact the material world effects our minds).  If you agree, which I think
you do, that capitalism faces problems that only a nationalised, planned (and
therefor democratic, out of necessity) economy can solve.  The material world
forces certain events to take place that will lead to the solution of these
contradictions.  Either we commit those events (rather we are aware of it or
not) or we, as a speceis, are dealt a heavy blow.  "The common ruin..."


Kevin writes;

>	Mike, which chapters of the LPA have called for the expropriation
>of the top 500 corporations in the United States? I would'nt believe that
>a single one of them has. Are you telling the truth? Which chapters have?
>How many members do they have? 

  In a report on how the organisation Labor Militant influenced the
convention it is written that;  

    "On the issue of public ownership, we [Labor Militant] prepared for two
situations.  One was for public ownership of closed plants, which was passed
by the NY Metro chapter, and the Local 444 resolution which called for public
ownership ot the top corperations, which was also passed by the NY Metro and
Portland LPA chapters.  It was imossable, however, to ger this issue for
debate on the floor."

    These are the kind of things that socialists can help achieve.  If only
more socialists would participate, we could expect more of this type of
thing.

  ---Mike Dean
     


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