[lbo-talk] the "principles of solidarity"

SA s11131978 at gmail.com
Sun Sep 25 12:20:34 PDT 2011


http://nycga.cc/2011/09/24/principles-of-solidarity-working-draft/


> Through a direct democratic process, we have come together as
> individuals and crafted these principles of solidarity, which are
> points of unity that include but are not limited to:
>
> * Engaging in direct and transparent participatory democracy;
> * Exercising personal and collective responsibility;
> * Recognizing individuals' inherent privilege and the influence it
> has on all interactions;
> * Empowering one another against all forms of oppression;
> * Redefining how labor is valued;
> * The sanctity of individual privacy;
> * The belief that education is human right; and
> * Endeavoring to practice and support wide application of open source.
>

I don't get it. Why the Unitarian-therapeutic tone, the prefatory hand-wringing and throat-clearing, the randomly appended issues? (Open source?!)

This is a real question: In a protest against Wall Street, is there some aversion to saying something about Wall Street? Why not a manifesto that says

1. Here are some things we don't like about Wall Street.

2. Here are some things we don't like about current society. (In 30 words or less - e.g., it's insufficiently free, democratic, and equal. That's all you need.)

3. Here's why this gathering can help to change (1) and (2). Join us.

Orwell:


> The first thing that must strike any outside observer is that
> Socialism, in its developed form is a theory confined entirely to the
> middle classes. The typical Socialist is not, as tremulous old ladies
> imagine, a ferocious-looking working man with greasy overalls and a
> raucous
> voice. He is either a youthful snob-Bolshevik who in five years' time will
> quite probably have made a wealthy marriage and been converted to Roman
> Catholicism; or, still more typically, a prim little man with a white-
> collar job, usually a secret teetotaller and often with vegetarian
> leanings, with a history of Nonconformity behind him, and, above all, with
> a social position which he has no intention of forfeiting. This last type
> is surprisingly common in Socialist parties of every shade; it has perhaps
> been taken over en bloc from. the old Liberal Party. In addition to this
> there is the horrible--the really disquieting--prevalence of cranks
> wherever Socialists are gathered together. One sometimes gets the
> impression that the mere words 'Socialism' and 'Communism' draw towards
> them with magnetic force every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer,
> sex-maniac, Quaker, 'Nature Cure' quack, pacifist, and feminist in
> England.
> One day this summer I was riding through Letchworth when the bus stopped
> and two dreadful-looking old men got on to it. They were both about sixty,
> both very short, pink, and chubby, and both hatless. One of them was
> obscenely bald, the other had long grey hair bobbed in the Lloyd George
> style. They were dressed in pistachio-coloured shirts and khaki shorts
> into
> which their huge bottoms were crammed so tightly that you could study
> every
> dimple. Their appearance created a mild stir of horror on top of the bus.
> The man next to me, a commercial traveller I should say, glanced at me, at
> them, and back again at me, and murmured 'Socialists', as who should say,
> 'Red Indians'. He was probably right--the I.L.P. were holding their
> summer school at Letchworth. But the point is that to him, as an ordinary
> man, a crank meant a Socialist and a Socialist meant a crank. Any
> Socialist, he probably felt, could be counted on to have something
> eccentric about him. And some such notion seems to exist even among
> Socialists themselves. For instance, I have here a prospectus from another
> summer school which states its terms per week and then asks me to say
> 'whether my diet is ordinary or vegetarian'. They take it for granted, you
> see, that it is necessary to ask this question. This kind of thing is by
> itself sufficient to alienate plenty of decent people. And their instinct
> is perfectly sound, for the food-crank is by definition a person
> willing to
> cut himself off from human society in hopes of adding five years on to the
> life of his carcase; that is, a person but of touch with common humanity.



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list