Jesse Lemisch
----- Original Message ----- From: "Yoshie Furuhashi" <critical.montages at gmail.com> To: <lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org> Sent: Wednesday, October 25, 2006 8:37 AM Subject: [lbo-talk] The Importance of Burying "Dead Stalinists" (was Re:Let's Lock Up 14% of All Men Who Have Ever Married!)
> On 10/24/06, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
> > I don't get why it's so important that Herbert Apthetker may or may
> > not have abused his daughter. If it is a real social problem to the
> > degree some claim, then theirs is just one case among many. Is the
> > real cause for concern an effort to dredge up some dirt about a dead
> > Stalinist?
>
> As everyone knows, American leftists are once again at one of those
> low points -- after a few seemingly promising eruptions of activist
> energy in the 2000 Green Party campaign, the global justice movement
> focused on international debt (before 2001), Palestinian solidarity
> (during the second Intifada), demonstrations against the Afghanistan
> and Iraq Wars (till 2004), immigrant rights demonstrations this spring
> -- despite the fact that a big majority of Americans are now largely
> in agreement -- for once! -- with American leftists on one of the
> major issues of the moment not only in the USA but also in the world.
> So, the initiative on Iraq gets seized by the James Baker wing of the
> US power elite. :-|
>
> Why?
>
> One of the reasons is that too many American leftists are still
> fighting the wars of the past and can't focus on the points of
> agreement that do exist among us.
>
> It's really important for American leftists to get over the past
> divisions that do not have any practical consequence today. The
> merits and demerits of Herbert Aptheker's scholarship and political
> activism will continue to be debated among professional and amateur
> historians of slavery and the American Communist movement, but that is
> of historical interest only.
>
> We have to bury "dead Stalinists" and live in the present, building a
> new American Left based on what exists today. If a new American Left
> is to emerge (which may or may not happen), it can't be like the old
> Communist Party or its competitors on the Left, nor will it be like
> the movements of the long Sixties. Culture and society today are not
> like those of their times.
>
> --
> Yoshie
> <http://montages.blogspot.com/>
> <http://mrzine.org>
> <http://monthlyreview.org/>
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