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On 6/21/18 2:04 PM, Michael Yates via Marxism wrote:
I mean, why did you Louis or any of us bother to learn about the past, the good, the bad, and the ugly? Seems we just wasted our time.
I didn't feel it was necessary to elaborate on this but I was alluding to how the left destroyed itself in the 1970s through its schematic appropriation of Lenin, Mao, Stalin and especially Trotsky. The Trotskyist group I belonged to had 2000 members in 1977 but now it is reduced to 60 people about my age. As for the Maoists, they were twice our size but spread across several groups including Avakian's. Today, they have almost no influence. You get lots of people on Twitter paying obeisance to Stalin but that's what you'd expect. I don't know if there's a counterpart to Eugene V. Debs in Australia but if there is, that's who I'd advise those young people to read. The goal today is to build a socialist party that has much in commons with not only Debs's party but socialist parties around the world except those that are socialist in name only, like in France or Germany. I was impressed with DSA's involvement in immigrant rights even though the same week I got an email about their electoral work that was filled with the usual bunk. Let's hope the noose the DP is putting around Sanders's neck will wake them up.
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