> Yoshie wrote:
>
> > Is it your touchstone of ideological purity to have nothing to do
> > with anyone or anything associated with the Workers World Party?
Dennis responded:>
> No. Unlike you, Yoshie, I'm not interested in academic left parlor games. Do
> you honestly believe that the average working person, with whom you seem to
> have little contact (judging from your posts) would take the WWP seriously,
hang on Dennis, Your posts in response to Leo's distortions of CHomsky's response to 9/11 have been really helpful and sharp. But these acrimonious responses to Yoshie don't seem very constructive. Give the comrade credit, she's been doing some bangup work helping to organize an anti-war movement that is, from the posts she's been sending tell me at least, not engaged in sectarin fratricide. I don't know her take on WWP's ideology, Idoubt that she embraces the WWP the way you seem to be portraying her at the moment. I certainly can buy many of your criticisms and still say that a good number fo their articles in their newspaper are pretty damned informative. Yoshie and I were in the college inthe 80's, involved in student organizing then (or at least I was), neither one of us fell into the sectarian cult route...Just because one says that they can march together with someone of a different ideological take doesn't mean they have to buy into their ideology, does it? Or am I missing something that you're trying to argue here? more below:
you write:
> especially once they were exposed to its rhetoric and desire for
> control? I want nothing to do with the WWP because they are fascists and
> parasites. But you are free to frolic with the supporters of Chinese
> Stalinism, which I can see you have no trouble doing.
>
That's just not an accurate protrayal of what Yoshie is doing at the moment. Her relationship with wwp members or even with groups liek spartacus league havenothing to do with 'frolicking'...
yoshie asked you:
> > 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"?
>
you responded:
> Actually, I was opposed to the AFL-CIO when I was active in Central American
> issues during the 80s, given that their then-leader, Lane Kirkland, was
> pro-contra. But like the Teamsters, there are dissidents in the AFL-CIO, and
> the ones I came in contact with during that period were truly committed to
> stopping Reagan's wars and thus were in oppositon to the national union's
> stance.
>
Dennis, your answer doesn't address Yoshie's question, does it? Her point is that if John Sweeney tomorrow showed up at a picket line, would we reject his participation? Or if he showed up at an anti-racism rally to protect people who are taken to be Arab from attacks, would we refuse to participate in a coalition with him? He has some pretty unpleasant baggage in his background, just ask the list moderator...I thnk this was the point Yoshie is making.
Yoshie asked you:
> > 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?
>
You responded:
> I think it's a threat to Chinese workers, many of whom toil in prison
> sweatshops turning out product for China's foreign investors. As for the
> AFL-CIO, see above.
>
Again, that's not helpful either really. I lived in China for two years, did my research interviewing workers involved in resisting state owned enterprise privatization who are about as serious in their committment to anti-imperialism as you can get and who all risk arrest for their involvement in SOE conflicts. They would be thrilled to hear that there are protests in the US against war at the moment. On the prison sweatship issue, I'm not sure where your information comes from for that. There are plenty of sweatshops in China, but the prison sweatshop issue was largely one that was made a big deal of in the early 90's when a virulently right wing 'dissident' named Harry Wu made a whole host of later discredited claims about prison labor camps in China, the selling of organs, etc. etc. The labor movement in the US still refers to him as a Chinese working class hero, but he is in fact as right wing as Jesse Helms. I fear I divert however...
Yoshie asked:
> > 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?
>
> You think the WWP is opposed to war? I have a friend who was in Tienanmen
> Square during the crackdown. He spent the better part of eight hours face
> down on the pavement while a Chinese soldier periodically hit him with a
> rifle butt. All the while my friend heard students pleading for their
lives and then being silenced with a couple of shots. Your buddies in the WWP
> celebrated this. That you can make common cause with these people is at best
> disgusting, at worst insane. Good luck with your "anti-war" movement,
> Yoshie.
>
The WWP can be criticised for supporting the crackdown uncritically if that was its position (I was in Taiwan at the time with no contact with the US left at that time, and a few months later in parts of southwest China). However, aside from Li Minqi and Wang Chaohua, not much of the student movement was any too progressive, most were very ideolgically liberal in orientation and downright opportunist. The claims of a massacre occuring on June 4th are not incorrect, though as Robin Munro explained carefully an dthoroughly in a Nation article in 1990, June 11th edition, the claims of a massacre inside Tiananmen Square or that it was mostly students who were killed were greatly mistaken. Munro, as you should know, is hardly a friend of the CCP. My frind Li Minqi, who did spend two years in jail for his call at Beijing University for Chinese workers to rise up in 1991 (or 1990?) would agree with this sentiment and he is one of the very very few of the Tiananmen student leaders who has shown any concern for th e working class in China since he arrived in the US. Inany event, I divert again. I've walked on picket lines with workers who have some pretty repugnant views re: women, immigrants,...believe in ghosts...but on the picket line they can be my comrades. You shouldn't underestimeate this anti-war movement either. People like Yoshie and others are saavy and know th e mistakes that peole like Ramsey Clarke made during the Gulf War Movement...
Steve
> DP
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