Nathan Newman -Except back then the CP and other left groups actually had innovative -strategies and some real sense of tactics.
+CB: Would the Nathan Newman's of the 1920's and 30's have said this about +the CP then ?
In the 1920s, the CP were often tactically idiots. But in the 1930s I would have been a critical fellow traveler with the CP on a whole range of domestic issues, criticizing them on foreign policy but seeing them as strong allies in fighting racism and other evils in the labor movement and society.
My criticism of the WWP/Workers World folks is not just their bad foreign policy but that their analysis -- which is stupider and more vile than the CP's "Popular Front" views by far -- leads to a form of political action that is tactically idiotic. CP praxis in the 1930s was smart, innovative and sometimes brilliant, which is why they were able to develop so many substantive allies outside the party in a whole range of venues.
Nathan Newman: -The CP was not just calling for empty marches
+CB: I bet then many liberals called the Ford Hunger March or the marches of +the Unemployed Councils "empty". CP had many marches with small numbers of +people then too. There was much thankless work in small numbers before +success.
Some of the late 1920s marches weren't particularly successful or useful, although some were.
You can argue that they were useful in recruiting cadre and some publicity, but that's not the actions that really built the Party into the strong force it became. Those came with the 1930s when the CP actually engaged the AFL and then CIO, created strong tactical alliances in the Democratic Party, and developed strategic goals tied to concrete wins for the working class.
Nathan Newman: -The best, smartest organizers were in the radical groups. These days, the -smart organizers exist in a diverse group of non-profit organizations and -among many of the new militant Democratic groups-- and it is to the smart -community groups and the militant Dem types that the unions are turning now -for new cadres to staff up their new organizing drives.
-CB: What's the test of whose "smartest" ?
You win. A foreign concept to the modern left, but figuring out a strategy that succeeds in a goal is the best test of being smart.
If you set out to stop a war and fail, you're strategy was dumb. See definition of dumb under ANSWER.
-- Nathan Newman