>ideological purity
Is it your touchstone of ideological purity to have nothing to do with anyone or anything associated with the Workers World Party? :-0 I must admit I'm not very interested in the sort of ideological purity that you have us safeguard, but let's suppose, for the sake of argument, that ideological purity is of utmost importance. Why not, then, make not working with AFL-CIO officials the litmus test, since you say "You cannot apologize for state terror on the one hand, then convincingly oppose it on the other"?
At 6:26 PM -0400 9/27/01, Doug Henwood wrote:
>From: Marsha Niemeijer <marsha at LABORNOTES.ORG>
>
>Will the Drive to War Kill International Labor Solidarity?
>
>A Labor Notes Editorial by Teófilo Reyes
<snip>
>The AFL-CIO quickly declared full support for any actions President
>Bush chose to carry out, and the UAW followed suit. The Teamsters
>recovered their Reagan-era fervor and immediately called for war
>against all states harboring terrorists. John Sweeney said he had
>called President Bush to offer support and said, "We stand fully
>behind the President and the leadership of our nation in this time
>of national crisisŠ.We will fully support the appropriate American
>response."
Also recall the history of the AFL-CIO's foreign operations as analyzed by Beth Sims (e.g., _Workers of the World Undermined: American Labor's Role in U.S. Foreign Policy_, Boston: South End P, 1992), Kim Scipes (e.g., "Albert Shanker and the AFL-CIO in Support of U.S. Imperialism" 28 September 1997 at <http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/45b/098.html>), and others.
Is there any reason you think that the Workers World Party's support for the Chinese state is a larger threat to the workers of the world than the AFL-CIO officialdom's support for U.S. foreign policy? What makes it OK to support strikers together with AFL-CIO officials but not OK to work with Workers World organizers (among many others, mind you) to get an anti-war movement going?
Yoshie
P.S. I rather think that anarchism is on the average the most ideologically puritan among all left-wing political traditions.