> >Well, "hi, I'm a liberal" seems like the kiss of death in American
> >politics, so why not try "hi, I'm a communist" and see how that
> >works out?
> >
> >MG
>
> Stan Goff says that "claim[ing his own] politics up front" worked for
> him when he had to debate "a serious neocon heavyweight," -- a
> "six-language-speaking, ultra-curriculum-vitaed,
> foreign-policy-PhD'ed Near East scholar who had, according to the ads
> for the debate, just driven 2,000 miles around Iraq" -- at Winthrop
> University in South Carolina:
>
> <blockquote>He might red bait me, so I'd just claim my politics up
> front and take that away from him. Don't get tangled up in arcane
> minutiae; stick to arguing what the real reason are likely to be for
> the war - I couldn't argue about specific developments anyway,
> because I'd been out of touch for a month. Denounce Kerry early and
> often so he can't turn it into a post-election debate about Bush's
> "mandate." Don't claim the war is about "stealing" oil (a favored bit
> of nonsense among liberals that can be easily demolished). Talk about
> it as a crisis of capitalism, because they never want to discuss
> this. Hit him in his Zionism because it's basically indefensible any
> time a couple of actual facts are deployed and if he gives me any
> shit, bring up the USS Liberty (A low blow I know, but I didn't have
> to go there, as it turned out). Imply that the re-election of Bush
> might actually be a better situation than the election of Kerry on
> account of the Bush administration's propensity to be the bull in the
> China-shop (Fallujah is proving this yet again), and bait him into
> defending the list of failures so far in Iraq. Finally, mention Haiti
> and see if he bites.
-------------------------------
I respect Stan Goff, but the topic was not "should America go communist?"
nor was he defending public ownership of the means of production; he
wouldn't have won that debate. He was talking to a university audience about
Iraq and Palestine and Haiti. I believe Goff when he says he won this
debate, especially against a Bush administration apologist described as a
"six-language-speaking, ultra-curriculum-vitaed, foreign-policy-PhD'ed Near
East scholar". An equally charismatic shambling working-class guy like
Michael Moore making the same points about US intervention in the Middle
East and Haiti, in the same unequivocal way, would have had the same
success - even after declaring himself a Kerry supporter. So I don't think
Goff's announcement that he was a Marxist had anything to do with it, as you
and he seem to suggest. If anything, Communism is today regarded mostly as a
curiosity, and Goff's vague identification with it was probably seen that
way by most of those present.
Doug's reluctance to wave a red flag at his audience and his preference to just stick to the issues at hand, which prompted this thread, actually seems to me to be more consistent with the traditions of the old socialist movement. Waving the red flag at strangers can get in the way of opening minds, especially in a conservative period or milieu, and it was a staple of the way radicals participated in the unions and other social movements to win support by focusing on the immediate struggles and letting the workers and others find their way to socialist politics through their experiences and a steadily developing trust in the socialists who were leading them. This was not only true of Communist party militants, but of all of the tendencies on the far left which were anathematized.
The same caution carried over into revolutionary periods. The Russian, Chinese, and Cuban masses were not roused to fight for "socialism" and "public ownership" but around "democratic" demands for peace, land, and bread (jobs), as well as the abstract ideals of liberty, equality, and fraternity stemming back to the French Revolution. As at the micro level, the theory was that the masses in the course of engaging in these revolutionary democratic struggles would come to understand the need to bring them to a socialist conclusion. As a practical matter, it was recognized that the propertyless and smallholding peasants, on whom the fate of these revolutions depended, could not immediately be won to socialism.
I don't think there was any great surrender of principle then, nor is there today, in accepting that you have to respect where people are at and reach them in ways they can understand, and that you cannot reach them by frightening or alienating them. Someone once said the only principle which really counts is what moves things forward in the circumstances.
MG