ANSWER: Name this socialist

Max Sawicky sawicky at epinet.org
Thu Aug 12 07:33:54 PDT 1999


The struggle over access to abortion as less serious seems to me a great blunder. . . . >>

Not as great a blunder as your misreading of what I said. The rest of your post is about someone else, not me.

I would like to highlight this remark:


>>
. . l Refusal to sanction religious appeals now mean greater hesitation by some to join the ranks of a secular and feminist party but it lays the grounds for the kind of decision making process that will be necessary if labor is serious about assaulting capitalism instead of domesticating itself in some new corporatist arrangement from which only the leaders of labor will benefit.
>>

What do you mean by "sanction religious appeals"?

In general, we are raking over arguments previously aired on this list.

I posed a practical dilemma in specific terms, regarding the LP, inviting responses on the same level.

Instead we see a self-marginalizing, demobilizing posture. This posture amounts to a checklist against which candidates and organizations are measured. One of the menu items is "free abortion on demand." For some others, it might be bilingual education. Free immigration. Fair trade. Etc. etc. etc.

To go back to my real-world example, if I was 100% "pro-life," I would still see the LP as somewhat off-kilter, since it does not adhere to that stance either.

The real question is not what list of paper demands WE like, but what is the political process whereby the working class comes to an understanding of class society and its alternatives?

I don't raise this to make some moral point about who is active and who isn't. I'm not particularly active myself. Haven't been *very* active since the 1970's, and didn't accomplish much then in any event.

But if we're supposed to be talking about politics, we ought to be devoting a bit more attention to positive efforts -- not just trashing those in power, or criticizing most everything on the left which is actually trying to mobilize people around what to be for, not just what to oppose.

mbs



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