> Mike Yates wrote:
>
> >Now a good question is: what follows from our knowledge that Clark
> >Kissinger made these statements in the past? Or that he is in the RCP,
> >or that the RCP is, in the view of some, a cult and full of fanatics?
> >Carrol suggests that, since the RCP has extremely little power and
> >influence in the U.S., it is a butterfly. So why bother with this
> >attack on Kissinger and the RCP? Is there some other motive for this?
> >Is the attack on Kissinger an attack on Mumia and the movement to free
> >him?
>
> I think that there are at least four different strands of American politics
> with regard to the issues in question here.
>
> [SNIP]
> 3. Now, there are those who think that their brand of left politics might
> be more popular if only a Ramsey Clark, a Clark Kissinger, the WWP, the
> RCP, Serbian nationalists, a Milo, a Saddam, etc. dropped dead. [snip]
We have an issue here which has led me in the past to tick off *both* Doug Henwood and Lou Proyect -- our response to sectarians, dogmatists, and other detritus on the left. Yoshie puts it very nicely: Both Lou and Doug (not to mention Max and Nathan) want to do battle against these "sectarians" because they disgrace the left. What neither Doug nor Lou will admit is that it is in fact utterly futile to rage against these sectors of the left, as futile as it would have been for the later Captain Robert Falcon Scott of the Royal Navy to have complained in his journal that all would have been well were it not for all that fucking snow. Those organized sects (assuming for the sake of argument that they are all indeed very nasty people) aren't even a large part of the problem. Thomas Gray gives us a pointer:
For many a gem of purest ray serene,
The dark unfathom'd caves of ocean bear:
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air.
Some village-Hampden, that with dauntless breast
The little Tyrant of his fields withstood;
Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest,
Some Cromwell guiltless of h is country's blood.
Every damn campus, every factory, every neighborhood almost, has its minor-league Avakian, JJ (a particularly wild Weatherman) or Michael Moore (the last probably writing for the campus newspaper or the editing the union local's newsletter, cluttering the world with his ego). All these sects and local jackasses are as much a part of the weather of capitalism as snow was of the weather of Antarctica. And the only thing fulminating against them achieves is puff up the self-importance of the fulminators who bless god that they are so much superior to such lowlife.
And Nathan has, actually, gotten only half-way to a criticism of the Mumia movement. It is *not* the sectarians who are to blame. Let me use an analogy from the days before the Interstate Highway System. There would be a slow moving auto. Then a driver would catch up with it but not pass. Then a third -- and pretty soon a long line of blocked traffic. Who was to blame? NOT the slow driver (the sectarian), who was merely being him/herself. It was the *second* driver, who was the second driver because he/she had been driving faster (was not a sectarian), but failed to pass. Then there were two cars to pass -- much more difficult!
The sectarians were just being themselves. They will always be with us. They are as much a part of capitalism as is the econ department at Harvard or humanitarian bombing.Those to blame (if anyone is to "blame") are those non-sectarians who have not the political know- how or courage or energy to keep things going in spite of the sectarians. Doug not long ago complained about jargon spouting marxists at his Labor Party meeting. They were spoiling everything. More weeping and wailing about all that fucking snow at the South Pole. That's what real politics is always about -- working with people that you would rather not work with and getting something done anyhow.
Carrol
P.S. Of course Max looks at Carrol and Mike and Yoshie the way we might look at Avakian. But we aren't going to go away either -- so Max just has to live with us as we have to live with Avakian. It's a rough life as we psychotic depressives always say.