Be realistic, demand the impossible

[andie nachgeborenen]

Well, I don't agree with your slander of the Vietnam
War movement. You blame it for not taking on the US
government and not winning on its own terms. You
haven't done better, lieber Kamerad. That's a very
hard task. The movement went from meetings in living
rooms in 65 to a mass movement that brought down a
President, stopped another from escalating to nuclear
weapons (though it didn't know this), and energized
and transformed our society in lots of ways. By your
criterion, almost every mass movement in history has
been a failure. the civil rights movement--hell, 50
years after Brown, the schools are still segregated.
The union movement--110 years after Homestead, private
union density is down to less than 10%. The
anti-nuclear movements--we still have tens of
thousands of warheadsa nd no ABM treaty. The women's
suffrage movement, took 70 years from Senaca Falls.
The Chartists--utter failures, their objectives
(universal manhood suffrage and parlaimentary reform)
were not 

 attained till all of them were dead. 

You think of yourself a practical-minded realsit as
opposedto us dizzy-headed roamntics, but you have nbo
real conception of what it takestoa tatin anything.
Consequently you lower your sights to what can be
attained by "progressive Democrats." Tell me, Nathan,
how does _that_ strategy fare by your standards? Is
Pelosi gonna even try to stop the war, or has she done
her bit? 

jks
> > 
> >>I suspect it deeply pains you to ever have to
> confess that Marxists, and
> > 
> > that dreaded  sub-group, the >"authoritarian"
> (gasp!) Leninists have ever
> > contributed anything productive to any movement,
> anywhere.
> > 
> > I have no problem giving the SWP full credit for a
> movement that, despite
> > majority opposition to the war by mid-1968, was
> unable to stop the war for
> > another five years, and in fact saw the war expand
> to Cambodia and Laos,
> > including mass near-genocide bombings in Cambodia
> in 1973.
> > 
> > If that is the model of success promised by
> sectarian-led movements, then my
> > opposition to the WWP is just further validated.
> > 
> > -- Nathan Newman
> 
> Amen, Brother Nathan. It's kind of scary how much
> I'm agreeing with you these 
> days.
> 
> Funny me, I always thought that the SDS was the main
> group that fought the 
> Vietnam War.
> 
> Chuck0
> 
>
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> 
> "...ironically, perhaps, the best organised
> dissenters in
> the world today are anarchists, who are busily
> undermining capitalism while the rest of the left is
> still trying to form committees."
>                 -- Jeremy Hardy, The Guardian (UK)
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 

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