> In a post on the marxism list I took John at his
> word -- i.e., assumed that he had no desire to
> achieve unity with the likes of me, and after
> referring to the CPUSA's history as being
> glorious though marked by many warts,
> observed that John was rapidly becoming nothing
> but a wart. If he decides he can work with anti-
> ABBs -- that is, if he can apologize for calling us
> traitors -- then I'll have to retract that snarl.
So in other words, Carrol has decided to carry on a conversation with me on a list that I am not on, and which I read only infrequently? Even though I have asked him several times to explain his own position, right here, to no avail?
OK, first off, let me make it clear that as far as I can recall, I have never used the phrase "anybody but Bush" or its annoying acronym. It strikes me as something invented by Bush's defenders as a way to imply that his opponents are irrational. One needs only to read the reactionary commentators who shape the conventional wisdom -- Safire, Will, etc., all of whom adhere to a level of discipine that would put Zhdanov to shame -- to know that it has been a favorite tactic of theirs for several months now to laugh at the supposedly irrational "anybody but Bush" sentiments of Bush's enemies.
As for myself, I prefer the formulation "defeat reaction," which in this concrete case means "defeat Bush" -- not an abstract call for all times and places, but an assessment of the real-life political choice facing us all, which we get wrong at our peril. Carrol accuses me of confusing "the handling of contradictions among the people" with "the handling of contradictions between ourselves and the enemy," and I'm willing to engage in some self-criticism here . . . if he's right, though I don't think he is.
Why? Because the left-adventurist line right now is not at all -- dare I use the word? -- principled, since it is based on nothing concrete but only abstract categorical rejections of "participation in the Democratic Party, the graveyard of social movements" and other sundry metaphors. Not only do they fail to acknowledge the very real danger to Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, affirmative action, etc., which are concerns of large numbers of people and which no left worth the people's respect would ever ignore. They also offer no defense of their own positions that is worth taking seriously. For example, I have asked Carrol a number of times on this list to explain how "the Democratic Party" as such interfered with his attempts to turn the Rainbow into a permanent progressive presence, and how a supposedly "independent" electoral effort would necessarily have been free from similar pressures. He's not responded to this, and I suspect he can't -- because his conception of "the Democratic Party" is about as meaningless as the nebulous references to "the left" that he so often (correctly) criticizes.
Given this, isn't my time better spent trying to win over and convince the confused and the waverers among the vast majority of people? What reason is there to seek unity with the tiny ranks of the left-adventurists, when they clearly have no genuine interest in people's real-life concerns to begin with? As is stands right now, their contributions to building a movement amount to a net loss.
- - - - - John Lacny
People of the US, unite and defeat the Bush regime and all its running dogs!