Our movement has been called the Mdarxist movement; the socialist movement; the workers movement. I want to suggest that for a number of reasons none of these labels is satisfactory, and I would suggest that we refer to it simply as the Anti-Capitalist Movement. When "socialism" is labelled _the _goal it endlessly brings up the emand to say what socialism is, and that is pernicious as well as distracting. We do not know and should not pretend to know what socialism is. And the attempt to describe this hypothetical future is grounded in the delusion that mere thought today can control practice of a future generation. "Anti-capitalist" honors the necessary openness of the future.
(This, then, is incidentally a defense of the theoretical sophistication of those who organized and labelled the anticapitalist demonstrations last year in London. I would flatly reject the crticism that that demo was inadequatrely theorized, especially as the criticisms I saw conceived theory as the elaboration of the goals of the action.)
Anticapitalist Movment is superior to Workers Movement because of the increasing confusion in what the term "worker" designates. Worry over the apparent (repeat APPARENT) absence of "workers" from the movements of the '60s (aside from the racism of that worry) led to all sorts of theoretical and even practical confusion. The movement against capitalism will certainly in some sense be a movement of the "working classs," but it is best to avoid the theoretical confusions and embarassments that label and its ambiguity leads to.
And Marxist Movement simply ignores the fact that the movement can't exist without immense participation (in the leadership as well as the 'ranks') of those who may welll not even be "heavy users" (nice phrase) of Marx. It is also tied up with what one may calll "World-View Marxism," the delusion that one must possess a TOE and follow it even in minor details or else one will stray from the True Path of Revolution.
In short, "Anticpalism" can both contain and honor our tradition stretching back to Francoix Baboeuf and including even the roles of those who at some point 'betrayed' it AND provide the needed framework for the participation of widely diverse "world views" and philosophical positions within the movement. Unity can be based on practice, loosely theorized at any given stage of the struggle.
I like shag's "heavy users of Marx," and I suspect that will contiue to be an accurate description of many/most withing any anticapitalist movement, but it need not be a ticket of admission. And the broadness of the movement need not be acheived through (pseudo-)sophisticated theorizings of "popular fronts" and "united fronts" etc.
Carrol