> [SNIP]
But the various struggles do not have that coherence and
> ideological glue. If there was such a coherent overall class conscious
> movement, it might make sense for Black people and other oppressed
> groups to forego significant self-determination. But since it is not and
> has not been effectively radical for many decades, Black people have to
> develop forms of self-struggle of all types to survive
The obviousness of Charles's point is so overwhelming that I continue to be stymied by the inability of so many marxists and left to grant this *political* point -- and also grasp that the abstract premises of Marxism do not *directly* bear on the question, in so far as those same abstract principles, intelligently grasped and through collective decision making critically applied will give DIFFERENT answers to the same question under different historical circumstances.
Someone recently noted that I was "enraged" by inaccurate construals of my texts but had not attempted to construe Albert's text in another post. I was not, in fact, even irritated by misconstruals of my own texts, but "enraged" is too mild for my reaction of the consistent failure of a series of posts to pay any attention at all to the repeated core emphases of almost everyone who had posted in "defense" of the BRC. (I place *defense* in quotes, despite Thompson's disapproval of so marking single words, because in fact the BRC was no more in need of anyone's defense than is a high pressure area or any other objective phenomenon.) Those who criticize the *existence* of the BRC (and many more meetings like it) are simply spitting in the wind).
In fact, the real task of marxists is not to "criticize" *or* "defend" the BRC or similar events but to correct our understanding of U.S. capitalism in order to understand the necessity of the BRC -- necessity in the strong sense not of mere "need" but of necessarily, willy-nilly, following from the material reality of U.S. history. That is only one of the reasons that all the attempts so far to respond critically to Lou's fine history of the Black National movement have been strictly beside the point. (And why Rakesh's plaintive request that someone try to disprove his arguments has no place in a serious political discussion. He didn't present any arguments on the political questions at stake.)
Carrol