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For the black folk here who have suffered and died for the franchise, as a
key strategy in the overall fight for black liberation, it is anything but
irrelevant.
The franchise is something that was fought for across various cultures and 'races'.
Yes it has been unevenly achieved and black people and women came to it later, but
only a little later historically than white males. Here in South Africa black people
have only recently achieved it. But SA provides one of the clearest cases of how this
franchise is precisely NOT a stage on the road to anything. Nor is it in the US or
anywhere else for that matter. For capital it is an essential good in itself and
that's where it stays. The idea that it is an essential 'stage' on the road to
communism or something is a Leninist dogma, not a proven fact (or even a particularly
strong theory in my opinion). It has never been proven in practice.
This argument reminds me of the kinds of problems many of us
have repeatedly encountered from so-called trotskyists and anarchists,
Thank you - although you did not have the good grace to sign your message, at least
you identify yourself as standing on the far right of the 'communist' movement with
this ritual denunciation.
who
for all their vocalizations against religionists themselves go for the
easy, bipolar, moral "solutions" that are, after all, dissociated from real
conditions. It's pure idealism, all goal and no strategy, utopian at its
very core. The question remains, as we continually ask our friends in the
DE community, HOW does this transformation take place, and WHO effects it?
What are the stages of struggle that get us from HERE to THERE?
You don't have a monopoly on this question. And I would think that the political
tendency that you obviously belong to has more answering to do than most of us - what
exactly is the THERE that you want to lead us to?
Effective revolutionary activity has never begun with the fight for the
socialist transformation of society.
More's the pity. But the Leninist deadend is becoming more and more exposed for what
it is.
It has begun as a struggle against
specific conditions--misery and repression. Masses have never been
mobilized by a theory. They are mobilized concretely around specific
grievances. To get "there", we have to begin "here."
Sorry, my mistake. This isn't even Leninism - this is just populist mumbo jumbo.
Do you think the Black Caucus just walked out of Congress to protest on
behalf of Al Gore?
Struggle centers around many issues, economic, social, political. But
ideological struggle is essential, and that doesn't begin with with dogma
and jargon from the left passed on to the masses from on high. The masses
are saturated with ruling class ideological assumptions, as we all are to
some degree. The purgative is a situation like the one that exists now,
when the mask of legitimacy is ripped off. People will recognize, step by
step, what is and is not legitimate, but through their experience in
struggle, not through our preaching.
Don't forget how hypocritical the Declaration of the Rights of Man was.
Nonetheless, it was the spark that eventually lit the flame for the Haitian
Revolution and the abolition of slavery there, as well as independence.
L'Overture's tenure as leader of that struggle was always motivated by the
desire to be merely equal members of the French community. It had to
advance under that banner for a time to progress to Dessaline's eventual
demand for independence. Changing strategies and alliances demanded no
less for effective struggle. Dessalines could never have forged the
initial alliances--which were necessary--and L'Overture would never have
had the will or inclination to massacre the French, which Dessalines
did--no less necessary given the conditions.
The struggle against slavery was a struggle for modern democratic capitalist society
and a struggle against pre-capitalist forms of coercion. What is the analogy that
you're making between that and the present conjuncture, which is what I was talking
about?
In the US, IMHO, racism as institution and ideology, is so entrenched and
intractible that it can never be solved.
That's why I have given up on
trying to convert white people and "fighting against racism," per se. The
fight here, in my opinion, is not anti-racist--that's a tactical issue.
It's for Black liberation--which is similar in many respects to national
liberation, which is likely the only struggle in this country with
genuinely revolutionary potential.
Gosh this is real old style CP dogmatism at its finest. Could you please supply just a
little substantiation? Is all this more 'revolutionary' than the anti-capitalist riots
that are erupting with growing frequency in different parts of the world? Or does one
not question the patron saint of 'national liberation' who says that communists are
'infantile' but rightwing nationalists and preachers are 'revolutionary'? The fact
that Marxism somehow got tangled up in this counter-revolutionary rubbish is one of
the great tragedies of the century that we're leaving behind.
Tahir
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