I don't know how many people are doing international antimilitarist work; less than in the 80s, I suspect. But the antisweatshop and globalization work is another kind of internationalist. What's your point? This is long-haul work.
I do not run togoether what you wrongly call "Stalinist-baiting" with the argument that the US government's favorite dictator-to-hate of the month is bad enough to justify whatever awful thing the government wants to do. In fact, I have found in decades of practical experience that it only helps and does not hurt our organizing efforts to make clear that we, the organizers, have as much contempt for Saddam Hussein or whoever as the government, indeed more, since we opposed them before it was fashionable and never supported arming them, etc. In fact, defense of Saddam or Milosovic or whoever is harmful, because it makes you look like a nut, besides being wrong.
In any case, rejection of Stalinism, by which I do not mean the cult of personality, worship of the Father of Peoples, but rather support for the kind of political system that he and his epigones created, is not "baiting." It is a moral and political necessity. That system is not worth fighting for. It was worth fighting against--I mean by the workers. The grounds and means on which the US and the other capitalist powers opposed it were different and themselves contemptible. It will be necessary to repeat this ad nauseam as long as people on the left don't get it, as long as there are apologists for North Korea and nostalgia for the FSU.
You want a slogan for the simple? The old one will do: Neither Washington nor Moscow, but the international working class! Is that so hard to grasp?
--jks
In a message dated Fri, 7 Jul 2000 4:20:21 AM Eastern Daylight Time, Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1 at osu.edu> writes:
> I find it hard to believe that many American leftists are actually
engaged in anti-imperialist organizing and solidarity work with an
objective of withdrawing U.S. troops from South Korea and all other
countries . . . .
Horowitz and Butler, from different political perspectives, remind us of how failure to overcome red-baiting, demonization of the Soviet Union, and inability to explicitly support people's right to reject capitalism have always presented a practically insurmountable obstacle to Americans who wished to engage in anti-imperialist organizing and solidarity work effectively.
In today's post-socialist world, an inevitable argument we face, whenever we oppose imperial war-mongering, is that if we try to "bring the troops home," we are hoping that a Milo, a Saddam, etc. (instead of the Communists) will win. Names have changed, but the structure of the argument hasn't changed. Be it Stalin-baiting, Saddam-baiting, or Kim-baiting, we have yet to figure out how to overcome it and bring the troops home.
Yoshie
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