Doug Henwood wrote:
>
> >
> So, buddy, what's to be done? Can't propose anything until "we" have
> power, but how can you gain influence, much less power, if you don't
> have anything to propose. Sounds like a perfect prescription for
> disengagement disguised as its opposite.
>
I would suggest plunging into the anti-war movement. There are also miscellaneous and secondary "social" movements (Marta and the disabled for example) which don't throw much weight now, nor is there yet a context in which they can befolded, fold themselves, into a larger class movement. But in them people are relating to each other in struggle (even gaining some concrete advances), training themselves in political work, etc. etc.
The one's who make all the noise about having proposals seem to mostly sit around making proposals -- an activity which Engels and Marx got beyond very early (GI). (Journalists -- e.g., FAIR, you, etc -- get a free pass from me: your work is extremely useful, in fact vital, and I couldn't do it. But it also tends to seriously incompacitate you when it comes to practical political thinking.)
Let me say a word about training -- because I blundered at a meeting last Sunday and by the time it occurred to me that I had blundered it was perhaps too late to remedy it. The ISU Alumni Foundation is launching its first massive fund-raising ever, and this week is the kickoff. And who should they invite to speak at it but Madeleine Albright. (There is a long complicated and irrelevant story behind this which I won't go into here.) The first I knew of it was the paper Saturday mornign. We had a meeting scheduled of the BNCPJ group on Sunday (a special meeting for a particular purpose), for which few showed up, but we had enough time (for a change) for useful discussion -- and among other things we are going to picket & leaflet her appearance, with the leaflet also announcing plans for gathering people for the April 20 March. On the whole not bad for last minute planning by a rather inexperienced group of people.
My blunder involved forgetting a really basic principle in ths sort of activity. If it fails, so what, you go on to the next. But if it succeeds (varying definition: in this case I would say thunderous success would be 10 people not only taking the leaflet but wanting to talk to us), IT IS A CRIME IF ONE HAS NOT PREPARED FOR SUCCESS. In this case such preparation would have involved securing a comfortable meeting room on campus and providing coffee, fruit juice, cookies, etc. for chatting with people we reached. You can dream up vast actions or wonderfu proposals for what "we" should do in Afghanistan, but they are pointless unless (a) they contain a local action point, expressable in not more than 8 to 10 words), (b) an ability to recognize ways to grasp on to or to create situations in which people can be handled a leaflet, and (c) SOMETHING FOR THOSE PEOPLE TO DO RIGHT AWAY, AND THAT REQUIRES (USUALLY) A COMFORTABLE ROOM AND COFFEE/FRUIT JUICE. I learned that at the first political action I ever attended (a total neophyte with no ideas), in which there was a trememdous turnout, and the jackass who had organized it didn't know what the fuck to do with the people.
(It was while I was trying to write a leaflet for the action yesterday that I suddenly realized the blunder. It is really hard, almost impossible, to just sit at a desk or at a meeting and think of what needs to be done -- even if, as in this case, I had known this point for 35 years; but just starting to write a one page leaflet (with lots of white space) for a specific action kicks the brain into motion. This is true at an infinite number of levels -- including probably the 'invention' of language 40 to 70 thousand years ago.) The group needs Jan & me, but at present it would not be tactful for either of us to to push to be on the steering commitee (which only exists because we did push for its existence). And the people on it are committed and smart people -- just inexperienced.)
Someplace along the line you do need all sorts of "positive ideas," but it is really lame to go on and on with expoundign such good ideas in a vacuum.
Carrol