From:    S C 
To:      marxism-international
Subject: Re: M-I: For a culture of scientific discussion (Ben replies  to
Date:    Thursday, April 09, 1998 12:01 AM


Louis Godena:

>Jesse Jackson ran an extortion ring out of the Chicago headquarters 
>of the Democrat Party, wringing tens of millions of dollars out of
>"conscience-stricken" American multinationals.  He then parlayed 
>this ignoble scam into a white wife, six Mercedes, a Senate seat, 
>and all-white private schools for his children.  Gloria Steinhem, in 
>her *Ms* magazine, published some of the most anti-Marxist articles 
>of the 1980s. Bernie Sanders voted for the crime bill, and 
>criticized "Stalinist" Cuba for human rights violations.  I mean, 
>what do these people want? 

>Applause?


On one hand, one can agree with Louis Proyect about joining with
broad-based movements in order to move them towards the left. If we 
do not do this and continue to cut our throats, all is lost. But at 
the same time, what should we say about the leaders like the above? 
These people will betray the working class at the blink of an eye. 

This thing about "white wife" and "white schools" has also to be 
addressed. Remember Yasser Arafat, the revolutionary. Well, he is now 
married to a blond young women. Quite sometime ago, he gave an 
interview to Barbara Walters. If you took a look at the table laden 
with all kinds of delicacies and then heard him and his wife speak, 
it could be safely assumed that all was lost even if one did not know 
anything about Palestine. Arafat had sold out his people for some 
pieces of silver. Today, he has become a virtual puppet of the 
Israeli state although he sometimes huffs and puffs like a toad. 
Another example is the priest Alan Boesak from South Africa. He too 
had an affair with a 'white' woman. Then there is the self-hating 
reactionary Clarence Thomas (US Supreme Court judge) and the UN 
Secretary General, Kofi Annan - both married to 'white' women.

When one marries into the ruling class and also seeks a mate of a 
priviledged 'race' or 'caste', it shows someting. I would personally 
not trust a person like that in any serious matter for such a person 
would be compromised. Also compare Martin Luther King (who had a 
weakness for women) with the indomitable Malcolm X (who quit a life 
of drugs, sex and crime) - an implacable enemy of white privilege. 
The Black people loved Malcolm. Yet, it was Martin who provided 
leadership to the mass civil-rights movements. Another example was 
Jawaharlal Nehru who was a  handsome man  and a proud Kashmiri 
Brahmin. He too reputedly had many affairs d'coeur one of them with 
Lady Mountbatten. Now how can you trust a leader of a mass national 
movement supposedly fighting against British rule yet who is at the 
same time sleeping with the wife of the British Governor General? You 
cannot and the treacherous history of the Indian National Congress 
(representatives of the big bourgeoise of India) and its actions over 
the past 5 decades is a testament to that. Mahatma Gandhi also tried 
some strange sexual experiments. He  tried sleeping with unclothed 
women to see if he would be aroused (he was trying to renounce sex 
and adopt the life of Brahamacharya). Yet he was honest about this 
fact and wrote about it. And he was an acknowledged leader of the 
Indian mass movement.     

About the matter of sex and women's emancipation, Lenin had some 
intereresting things to say in the interview with Clara Zetkin (see 
http://www.blythe.org/mlm/).

So how does one negotiate the twin valleys of reformism and 
sectarianism? I guess it depends upon the concrete situation with a 
far-seeing eye to the advancement of the class struggle.

S..


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