Nathan said:
>The difference between pretty dresses and gulags is that I think pretty
>dresses don't harm anyone else.
-Some people might think that those wearing pretty dresses cause what they -get. Likewise, some people might think that those who demand more also -cause what they get.
My first point was that the Soviet Union isn't as benign an object as pretty dresses, so backlash was more justified, even if the form of backlash was bad. Secondly, unlike pretty dresses, demands for social justice are not ends in themselves but means to an end, so if the result of a poorly strategized demand for justice is a loss in justice, then it was stupid and wrong to make that particular demand in that context.
What many folks seem reluctant to admit is that "good intentions" isn't enough for good activism. Results matter. Bad results, bad activism. So if the probable result of a particular political demand is backlash and political loss, then don't make that political demand. Make a different one that is more strategic and will move you towards the desired goal.
>Gulags and proletarian dictatorships aren't
>"trying hard" but perverting socialist values.
-Gulags have a real material reason for appearing, not simply because someone -decides to pervert socialist values. You think people in the States won't -ever get hauled off to an American gulag. -Proletarian dictatorships are the flip-side of the capitalist dictatorships -we all live in now. One person runs the show: Money, The Boss. The -bourgeois dictate, we obey. I want to see the proles dictate, the bourgeois -obey. Here's a good place to start:
Don't buy it. Not that the capitalist west isn't bad in all sorts of ways, but it's bad in DIFFERENT ways. Making the analogy is therefore unconvincing to most people. It's far better to condemn the capitalism world for what is obviously wrong with it, mass poverty and inequality, then to equate it with Stalin's particular form of repression.
>And on the broader point, if you fuckup by pushing too hard and the result
>is worse than if you had moderated demands and gotten more, than you
>shouldn't "try so hard." Stupid unstrategic militancy is nothing to
>praise.
-So who the hell died and made you the last word in deciding on the limits of -militancy? No single one of us can tell without a crystal ball exactly how -hard to push, when to leave off, etc. I'm all in favour of moderation when -the time seems right, but moderation as grand strategy?
Who said moderation as grand strategy? I'm all for militancy when it works. We were talking about whether the world would have been better off without the particular form of Bolshevik militancy. I think it would have been, and maybe the IWW-- a form of militancy I quite like-- might not have gotten so smashed during the Red Scare.
Nathan Newman