andie nachgeborenen wrote:
>
> The
> organizational effirts deserve accolades, even if the
> ideology of the people doing it is foolish or worse.
> Look at the RCP's excellent work around Mumia. Or
> indeed the CPUSA's long effort in the unions and the
> civil rights movemenr even before Montgomery. The CP
> didn't create the union movement in the 30s, no,
> capitalsim did that. But there would have been no CIO,
> UAW, UMW, etc. without the CP's organizing
> efforts--the efforts of apologists for the Stalin
> terror and the Soviet-Nazi Pact.
There's a lesson in here somplace, though I'm not quite sure what it is.
Abstractly, it's clear enough. No continuing mass mobilization (for reform or revolution) without a coherent ledership at the center. That has never really been in question. But what "coherent leadership" _means_ under given historical conditions is _always_ a matter of proper debate & struggle, and _how_ such leadership is to be created is also always under discussion, debate, and struggle. Attacks on leadership as such, and sniping at _de facto_ leadership at any given time, merely clutter the debate.
I doubt that this list represents a dependable sample of what is going on in localities, regions, and within the various quasi-coalitons and groupings that exist. But assuming for a minute that it does, it seems fairly certain to me that a displacement of WWP from "leadershi" in the embryonic mass movement has to take the form of unity/struggle _within_ the ANSWER coalition. Attacks on it from the outside will, probably, only strengthen its grip by making it seem that WWP is the non-sectarian, its enemies the sectarian, force in the movement.
An ad hoc definition of dogmatism -- the conviction that The Truth will make you free. Like Althusser's economy, The Truth only becomes operative in that last lonely instance (which never comes of its own).
Carrol
> jks
>
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