[lbo-talk] "Diversity of Tactics"

[Carrol Cox]

It seems as though almost everyone in this debate is treating OWS as though
it were a unified Party with a Central Committee -- and within that unified
Party an internal struggle has been launched among tendencies each desirous
of making _its_ program the program of The Party! But probably the best
analogy both for OWS and for any 'tendencies' within it would be the Lunch
Counter sit-ins of the early '60s. Each one was complete in itself. There
was no national coordinating body, nor any particular communication among
the various sit-in actions. I think there were "criticisms" of those
scattered events as though they were a Party -- criticisms that were long
ago blown away by the wind. Within each OWS there are various tendencies;
those tendencies are expressed both in internal debates but in activities
carried on by various groups within the OWS. AFTER THE FACT, someone puts on
this phenomenon a descriptive label, "Diversity of tactics," and now lbo &
othr forums finds itself engaged in the risible activity of debating
something called "Diveresity-of-TacticsISM" and whether or not that
(non-existent) Program should or should not become The Line of the Party
(which does not itself exist.

Tsk-tush.

Carrol