> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
> [mailto:owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com]On Behalf Of Charles Brown
>
> But hasn't the opportunism of mushy centrism been the 50 year
> failed strategy of Reutherism/Meanyism, failing both the U.S.
> working class and proletarian internationalism ? It has been
> tried and it doesn't work.
Agreed. Which has nothing to do with what I said.
Or to paraphrase the joke, whose this "we" in your assumption kimosabie? Nowhere do I advocate mushy centrism; I merely argued that on any political spectrum, there is by definition a point and people in political bargaining of those seeking to get 50% plus one vote who will inevitably engage in mushy centrism. In the purest socialist state, there will be the same point and the dynamics of mediation and compromise will create a mushy centrism closing every final political deal.
People act as if Bill Clinton and his mushy centrism is one of us, and thus debating his actions is somehow debating what we as activists should be doing. My point is just that bashing his existence is silly. He is not the cause but is the reflection of class and political forces at this time that define the political spectrum.
There is a 50-yard line on every field, a center to every circle and a middle to every line. And a mushy center to every political spectrum. Like gravity, I said it was inevitable.
Which also says little about what left activists should be doing, which I also noted in arguing for more serious discussion about how to respond to real changes in working class institutions like the CLC structures.
People makes these statements about me somehow advocating mushy centrism and I have to laugh.
I lost my first union organizing job partly because I publicly asked a Democratic Senatorial candidate if he was going to do anything to stop death squads in El Salvador - and was hauled into a back room and told that was inappropiate and was later told I was too political to work there. When our union (UAW-affiliated) at UC-Berkeley led a stupid strike, I was one of the leaders of rank-and-file participants who denounced the UAW leadership (i.e. Reutherism) for using such limited means and advocated direct action and corporate campaign attacks on the trustees.
I've organized rallies of thousands of people, mostly socialists and other activists, for affirmative action and against welfare reform, where the results of mushy centrism were denounced in no uncertain terms. In our major Oakland march on welfare, we carried giant puppet caricatures of Clinton and Pete Wilson, and denounced Clinton-Gingrich welfare policies. I've been arrested many times, been clubbed by police, and led walkouts of graduate students against liberal faculty for their failures to promote affirmative action. In fifteen years of of activism, I've worked on a grand total of three conventional political campaigns, only one of which (a couple of phone banks for Barbara Boxer) could be even considered mushy centrism. The other two were radical challenges to mainstream Democrats in primary or non-partisan elections. I've written reports on the economy that I was proud were denounced as "socialist" in the San Francisco Chronicle.
So I have no problem with using radical action and thought to organize and mobilize against the mushy center.
Within the context of California, my radical activism along with those of many others moved the point of mushy centrism from Pete Wilson to Gray Davis. It's an improvement there but ultimately neither the point nor the endpoint of radical struggle.
The point of struggle to build radical power through organizations that can continue to empower the diversity of progressive forces. Occasional bouts of rhetoric denouncing the powers that be is a tried and true method of attracting new recruits to that strruggle and is occasionally fun in rousing the troops on a slow day.
But when you meet in a room to plan actions or discuss the analytic state of the world, it is self-indulgence to bash mushy centrism. It's just rhetoric. In fact, one of the ways to tell the difference between organizations that are doing real organizing and those just pissing around is the level of rhetoric at their internal meetings. Those pissing around use lots of rhetoric because that is their form of activism - denounce everything and everybody without really mobilizing anyone. Those doing real organizing don't have time for rhetoric and get down to analysis of the pros and cons of different alternative actions.
Where discussions of mushy centrism come up are in concrete debates on when to support specific political compromises and candidates. It comes up in every union contract ratification and every political endorsement. But rhetoric bashing the compromise or "candidate that can win" is extremely unconvincing unless a case can be made for an alternative strategy. Radicalism is not mindless denunciation of the present situation but the building of the power to choose an alternative.
No radical likes the political balance of force as they are, but to paraphrase Marx, the point of philosophy is not to denounce the world but to change it.
This thread started with Tom, Josh and I debating a bit on the likely effects of the proposed restructuring on the CLCs on the ability of labor to help change those balance of forces. And instead of adding to that discussion, folks jumped in with a bunch of Democratic-bashing rhetoric. Pretty useless for the discussion at hand like a lot of rhetoric.
So if people like Charles have an opinion on "Reutherism/Meanyism", how does that effect your analysis of one very direct product of that trend, namely the Central Labor Council structure? What is your experience with those local structures and how does that effect your view? Do the new structures proposed sound like they will hurt or help? Should grassroots labor activists be mobilizing to block the changes or propose additional new changes to take advantage of the window of opportunity of restructuring?
So if folks can pull themselves away from pretty empty rhetoric about the evils of moderation, how about some non-rhetorical contributions to the debate on what to do about the Central Labor Council restructuring?
--Nathan Newman