Carrol Cox wrote: I hope I'm wrong, but I suspect dependence on organized labor is as fruitless as dependence on Chuck0's anarchist comrades.
DH: So what's the answer then?
I reply: This seems to me an odd question. Why should there _be_ an answer? Not all questions, perhaps even not a majority of questions, have answers. Others have many answers (all equally good til tested and revised in practice.) The general topic is deciding on strategy and tactics in the anti-war movement and, within that framework, the role workers _as workers_ (i.e. in unions, union drives, or union caucuses) can be expected to play. (Since nearly 90% of the population is working class, clearly most participants are working class. But the immediate question concerned unionized or unionizing workers.)
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I wrote: I also disagree (along the lines laid out by Ron Jacobs lately in Counterpunch) with those who want to duplicate under current conditions the Mass single-issue demos of the '60s -- but those overlap what I see as possibilities enough so I'll be with them in their efforts to push that strategy, not on the grounds that it will work but that the work will constitute the conditions under which new and better possibilities might emerge.
There is a very good and time-tested theoretical basis for something like but definitely not the same as the "Let's stop talking and do something" tendency, a basis enunciated in Napoleon's statement (I forget the French) that one does something and then sees what happens. _That_ is where new ideas and new theories come from. They don't drop from heaven.
And Marvin Gandall responded: I don't really catch your drift here, Carrol, or see how it relates to your point (and mine) that "Chuck0's envisaged tactics are a real waste of time" MG
I reply now: Chuck0's position was not the question here. I name another strategy, that of building mass peaceful single-issue demos around the demand "Bring the troops home now" (or Troops Out Now), which I partly disagree with but can support it in a way I could _not_ support or participate in Chuck0's proposed tactics. It is a waste of time and energy even to debate Chuck0's proposals.
The single-issue strategy and the strategy urged by Ron Jacobs overlap in such a way that participation in building the former is quite consistent with attempting _also_ to go beyond it along the lines Ron suggests. And that is where the second paragraph Marvin quotes comes in. We can never stop talking, but we not only can but _must_ also maintain a public practice, no matter how unsatisfactory, at a given time, the theoretical basis for that practice is. The theoretical disputes or gaps cannot be resolved except within an ongoing practice. So let's pause in the talking while we do something, than reconsider, revise, and act again. We _must_ maintain a public presence, no matter how weak.
Carrol