<HTML>Kelley: IMHO, LBO-Talk is a forum for political discussion. It is clearly not a vehicle for political action in the usually understood sense of the world, much less a site with pretensions to leadership in such political action. People come to this virtual place not to issue instructions in the form of manifestos, propaganda and such: this is not the _People's Weekly World_ nor the _Worker's Vanguard_, nor even a _Dissent_ nor _Nation_. Rather, we come here to exchange ideas and critiques of ideas, along with interesting information, with each other, in order that we might learn something from each other; some of us may also may find some pleasure in the act of political discourse itself. No doubt, since it is politics being discussed, many of us share some hope that some of what we learn will be of some help in our political struggles, but still recognize that a great deal of it is only tangentally related to those struggles. Now it seems to me that the best that can be done to further a particular struggle in this context is to take it seriously, to discuss it and how to advance it in depth. If someone has an idea about how to advance a struggle with which you agree or disagree, you engage that idea, in the belief that serious, thoughtful discussion can only improve the thinking and the political strategy of all concerned. Consider this analogy, which is very closely and deliberately based on the current dispute. Suppose it was the idea of "Wages for Housework" [a programmatic suggestion put forward by Selma James and some others coming out of the CLR James tendency of Trotskyism about 25 years ago, which may very well still have some adherents and advocates] and not reparations, which Jim Heartfield  had critiqued as something which "sounds like a disastrous political strategy to me." [I went back and got Jim's exact words.] Suppose you disagreed. What would be the appropriate response? If you thought you could engage him in a serious conversation, wouldn't you go about showing why that point of view was mistaken? If you thought it was impossible to do that, wouldn't you just ignore him? Would you instead announce that "only ignorant men, some of them who call themselves Marxists, think that the "Wages for Housework" is a "misguided" or "potentially disastrous" political strategy."? Would you say that "these pricks simply don't know what the fuck they are talking about, and they obviously have little understanding of the feminism, or contact with feminist women for that matter."? The notion that any strategy for advancing a struggle is beyond discussion is simply a move to close down open democratic debate, and appoint -- no, self-appoint -- the pope, the commissar of that struggle. There is now one infallible fount of wisdom, one indisputable authority, and his/her imprimatur is required to decide what strategies can and can not be discussed. And note: this is not an issue of the legitimacy of the struggle itself, which is clearly accepted in principle by all parties, but of what strategies should be employed to carry out that struggle. I had begun a little piece on the BK on identity thread which AOL and my computer ate before I set it loose, and I had intended to make its resurrection my next contribution to LBO-Talk. But I just couldn't pass by the McGee comments. Part of it was the instinctual teacher in me: McGee was acting the part of the playground bully, and that always makes it next to impossible for me to walk away. There was nothing substantive in his post: just the declaration that he was biggest and nastiest guy around, and would direct nuclear ad personam and race-baiting invective at anyone who disagreed with him. But it was also an authoritarian attempt to stop the discussion of a strategy which needs discussion, and which, contrary to McGee, is heavily debated in radical African-American circles. Randall Robinson did not dedicate a whole book to a subject which was "above and beyond" discussion; he wrote the book precisely because he believed it needed discussion. What happens what the next would-be commissar appears on the scene, and decides that it is support for a strategy of reparations which must be beyond discussion? Do we get to see who can be the biggest and baddest intellectual bully? Being serious about being involved in anti-racist or anti-sexist or anti-heterosexist organizing means taking the issues of strategy seriously, and of not surrendering the capacity to make intelligent analysis, and take action based on that analysis. Kelley wrote: << he already explained that he's engaged in anti-racist organizing and only rarely delurks to point out what is deeply problematic about what we whities say here every fucking time we open our mouths to talk about racism, how to fight it, etc.  spending a few moments here and there to point out that our job is to figure out how whiteness works and to end racist and racializing practices on OUR part is a part time job as far as i could see. i'd like to know if you'd feel the same if a feminist woman stepped in to tell the so-called feminist men here that 1]. they'd gotten some of the feminist theory and practice they're complaining about wrong and 2]. that maybe instead of telling feminist women how to overcome sexist bigotry and sexist oppression they might spend more time confronting the sexism of their institutions within which they work, live, love, play every day. something's wrong with thinking, as men, that you can tell feminist women how to run the show and, similarly, there's something wrong with white men and women doing the same to black men and women. kelley >> ------------------------------ Leo Casey United Federation of Teachers 260 Park Avenue South New York, New York 10010-7272 (212-598-6869) Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never has, and it never will. If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its waters. -- Frederick Douglass -- </HTML>