Stannard67 at aol.com wrote:
>
> Yawn...more anti-SWP flicking. If they're so "irrelevant," why does everyone
> else on the left find it necessary to attack them???
>
> stannard
Everyone? I've never written or (except by accident) read a word about the current SWP. A recent thread on the marxism list has, however, made, not the present SWP but the SWP of the '60s a current issue. Background: The SWP made a tremendous contribution to the anti-war effort when they introduced the slogan "Out Now," sweeping away all the quibblings and endless discussions of "well, if you oppose the present policy, what do you suggest" etc etc etc. In one form or another, most of the left accepted this perspective.
Warning: the following is strictly my point of view, which ex-SWPers would dispute hotly. I don't have the slightest idea what current SWPers would say.
But the second half of the SWP strategy (implemented through such national groupings as the Mobe and the Moratorium) was the single-issue strategy. That is, they argued for large peaceful demonstrations with but the single demand of Out Now, with no complexities through introducing other issues (such as Anti-Racism).
The SWP and YSA would recruit within these demos, but they would oppose the demonstrations or the anti-war coalitions in which they engaged developing their own politics further. (The CPUSA in its coalition activity put forth what an ex-SWP member on the Marxism list sneered at as a laundry list of demands. That is a fair characterization, but as I argue below the CP position while defective was preferable to the SWP's.) A large number of us around the country (mostly but not wholly SDS) who were either independent old left or new left who (like me) had rapidly moved toward identifcation with the old left argued that at the very least the Anti-War Movement should embody a vigorous anti-racist position, and in particular join in the defense of those elements of the black community (e.g., Panthers, DRUM) under heavy government repression. (We also wanted to push the coalitions towards a more specifically anti-imperialist position -- that was debatable perhaps but is not my focus here.)
I have since felt that the Movement of the '60s in Bloomington/Normal ended in late November of 1969 when Jan and I in the post-Nov. 15 meeting of the local Moratorium lost a battle to make defense of the Panthers against repression a central principle. We lost, two weeks later the Cook County States Attorne (using Chicago police) murdered Fred Hampton, and the movement in Illinois began to unravel -- others holding our position around the state had also lost. One immediate result is that the entire membership of the ISU SDS (and we had built a strong chapter) went over to the Weatherman position, exemplifying Lenin's remark that anarchism was the price the working class pays for its sins of opportunism. There was no active left organization on campus when the Kent/Jackson State murders occurred the following spring.
Now there has erupted a huge (and rather nasty) fight on the marxism list over the Post-Seattle movement, with several posters launching an all-out attack on "anarchism," the Black Bloc violence, etc. etc. etc., and with others arguing with equal vigor that whatever one might say ultimately about anarchy, marxists had to relate to the mass of the people in this movement. It was within this context that I gave roughly the above account of the SWP position in the anti-war struggle. One poster replied to me (in part) as follows:
*****
>>But the SWP's insistence on single-issue demos was objectively racist.<< [Cox]
Whoa!
What does THAT mean? It was "objectively racist" to use what they believed were the most effective tactics in organizing the movement against the war in Vietnam?
I could well respond that what you were doing, in trying to bring in a laundry list of demands to salve your conscience, was not just "objectively racist" but "objectively pro imperialist" and "objectively anti working class" and "objectively counterrevolutionary." This because'to the extent it wasn't miserable, wretched liberal tokenism, it would have narrowed the antiwar movement, pushed it towards the political fringe, and, by lessening the pressure on the ruling class and the mobilization, gotten more U.S. foot soldiers killed, who were overwhelmingly working class and disproportionately Black and Hispanic, as well as more Vietnamese.
In addition, I could add it was anti-Cuba, because you wanted to raise the thing about repression against Blacks, but, did you put in a motion for the moratorium to demand an end to the blockade of Cuba? So it was "objectively" anti Cuba from your point of view. And then I could say what you did was also "objectively" anti Cuba because you did raise other stuff that would have narrowed the movement. *******
There is the old SWP position stated quite concisely and forcefully. I want to comment here only on the false analogy he draws: "In addition, I could add it was anti-Cuba, because you wanted to raise the thing about repression against Blacks, but, did you put in a motion for the moratorium to demand an end to the blockade of Cuba?"
My response (in a later post on another list) was in part as follows (names suppressed):
*****
But ... is right that the CP tended to offer merely a laundry list of issues (...'s term; my term at the time was wishlist). But in the U.S. the "racial" issue is _never_ just another issue. It is the muscle and bones of all other issues, and to exclude anti-racism from the anti-war struggle was in fact to exclude the war from the anti-war strategy. ****
Anyhow, while the present SWP hardly seems worthwhile arguing about, the SWP position of the anti-war movement will come up over and over again, supported in one form or another forces that don't necessarily have any remote relation to Trotskyism. Hence debating it is a matter of current importance, not just a matter of history or a matter of interest only to students of the odd corners of the left. I would say the same today: a movement in the US that does not make anti-racism central, whatever its immediate occasion, won't go very far.
Carrol