>>I'd welcome discussion on goals and strategies, short-term, mid-term,
>>and long-term. Perhaps, you can help us begin a constructive
>>discussion on them by laying out what you think.
>
>Frankly, I don't know what I think at this point about these very
>important questions, except that I'm pretty sure that there is a
>very large potential popular opposition to the system which no one
>has quite found the right way to actualize, as evidenced by the
>uneasiness about the coming attack on Iraq that some polls (if they
>are worded the right way) and political observers have picked up,
>the fact (I think it is a fact) that many, many Americans really
>wish Bush were not in the White House and still believe (although
>they have been convinced that there's no good crying over spilt milk
>at this point) that he stole the election, the fact that books like
>Moore's "Stupid White People" and Chomsky's "9-11" have been selling
>so well (and TV was supposed to make books obsolete), etc.
I don't know where you live, but by now there must be a group or groups of activists in almost all cities (and even in some smaller towns) who have been getting together and discussing what is to be done in opposition to the coming war on Iraq and other questions. The question that you raise above is best discussed in that context, because what you want to _and_ can manage to do probably differs greatly depending on the number and demographic composition of existing local activists and activist groups. (I'd be interested in hearing reports on that from you and other activists on this list.) That said, there is no group who are more strongly opposed to the Bush agenda on war, economy, civil rights and liberties, etc., _and_ more vividly remember the stolen election, than African-Americans. African-Americans, however, have not as actively mobilized themselves against the Bush agenda as they could (and may in the near future). Existing activist groups should think more about what can be done about that.
>If I knew the magic formula for turning this potential into
>actuality, I'd wouldn't keep it a secret, for sure. One thing that
>does bother me a lot (as someone who finds a lot in Marx very
>enlightening about the capitalist system even in 2002) is that
>Marxists, who are heirs to a body of thought that claims to be
>"scientific," don't look very much like real scientists. If they
>were scientists, they would have had a body of commonly accepted
>knowledge to show for all their efforts by now, the way astronomers,
>physicists, etc., have. They wouldn't be constantly grabbing each
>other by the throats and clubbing each other over the head with
>their massive tomes, while the System goes blithely on its way. You
>don't see geologists and biologists acting this way.
Marxism, if it is a science at all, is a kind of social science, thus not quite comparable to natural sciences like biology and geology. By the standards of social science like economics, history, literary criticism, sociology, and political science, a small body of commonly accepted knowledge created within the Marxist tradition (which is itself quite heterogeneous) is not shabby, which is not to say that it is accepted at all by those who are not Marxists (though it has had an influence on even those who do not identify themselves as such and moreover reject Marxism's political objectives). -- Yoshie
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