From: neil <74742.1651@CompuServe.COM>
To: marx-int
Subject: M-I: Jesse Jackson & reformism
Date: Friday, April 10, 1998 5:10 PM
dear friends,
One of the main problems gaining understanding of
the vexed problem of taking on reformist influences
and reformists 'big names' bogarting of masses fight backs
and actions is the kind of political obscurantism that the
likes of Louis P and his trends like Committees
of Correspondence (CoC) -exCPUSAers peddle here.
Louis P thinks we build anti-imperialist movements
"through elecoral politics as well as mass action"
He thus lives in a previous age of capitalism. In the modern
epoch electoral politics of all stripes is counterposed to
mass action and working class independence from
liberal-laborism--and bosses "democracy'..
It is the practice that provides the uplift to theory here
too. Think about it. As cocerns the anti-US agression movements
in here the 80s supporting Central American workers/farmers.
When these movements gained in numbers and political
advance/experience in the odd years, the electoral charade
would push struggles back near step 1 in the even ones. Some
Democrats a la the DSA, CP, CISPES, POR, etc. would hand over the
podiums and slogans/programmes amenable to all and sundry
Democratic Party trojan horses time after time , the confusion and
illusions
in US "democracy' fostered were poison against the advance of the
struggles. Behind the scenes these same Democrats including
Jesse Jackson, were in tandem with the conservatives in trying
to spike the class struggles in the Central America and the USA.
Jackson was always pro-NATO in spite of pacifist sermons to
gullible lib-labs and even advocated sending US troops to South
Africa if open civil war there had broken out. JJ made his peace with
arch-racists like Orville Faubus and George "segregation forever" Wallace
What Louis P. and other pragmatists can't comprehend is that
the JJ's of the world are bourgeois themselves, albeit liberals.
JJs PUSH group was on the Government payroll for $500,000/yr +
since the early 70s. JJ and co. represent a bourgeois wing
of the black nationality whos job responsibilities for ties to
corporate capital are to keep the black masses (and others) under
control, come hell or high water of poor workers rebellions..
Louis Ps. apologetics for JJ and his trend spill out clearly when
he claims only after 1988, JJ "re-entered the Democratic Party
inner circles with a vengeance" . One question Louis P. When
other than for those legends in their own minds reformist -swamp
misleaders , had Jackson ever left the Democratic Party anyway??
Reformist Jackson is more honest than Louis P. here.
Fielding questions from fawning political neophytes at a
1984 Rainbow conference about a possible break with the
capitalist Democrats, Jackson stated in words to the
effect " you don't burn down your bank when you are
still making money in it" . In JJs case and with other petty bourgeois
outfits, you can take this literally as well as figuratively.
But this gets to some materialist analysis of politics and economy,
something Louis P and co. avoid on this list like Dracula
fear of the Cross.
As to Louis P. quoting Lenin on criticizing 'ultra-leftism "
in 1920, of course he shows no historical context here, but
Lenin turned out to be wrong a few times too, genius that he
was. This is the same period when Lenin came out for
"critical support" for the British Labor Party , a party which
Lenin himself had correctly castigated as becoming counter-
revolutionary in 1914-15 for supporting British Imperialism
inWW1, and entering the government cabinets, ordering
expulsions and jailings of anti-war socialist and workers,
for supporting conscription acts, wage cuts, anti- "hun"
campaigns etc.
If you use the Louis P mechanical formulas, you would
still be supporting "critically' the British Labor Party of
T. Blair today.
Wow , really a rrrrrrrevolutionary stance!
Neil
communist-left and proud
http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/3303
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