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On 4/24/2010 7:11 PM, Tom Cod wrote: > In all fairness, I think what the critique is is that most of us know about > the precepts of orthodox marxism, having heard all these sermons for decades > including when we were cadres in certain marxist sects and thus are a little > jaded by it as all that never amounted to a whole lot. The question is > then, in the real world outside of that isolated mileu, what is to be done? > If you want to be involved in that vanguard socialist party, then hey, why > waste time as there are about a dozen of them around in the form of > sectarian groups that one can sign up with spreading the faith. If the > uninitiated unfairly dismiss them as crackpots, then well, it goes with the > territory. > > The question is really what is actually going to go down in the real world > as Carroll and others have alluded to. Should we involve ourselves in > dogmatist sects with their culture of social isolation or is that outlook > ossified and a waste of time or rather is a perspective around more mass > formations like the Green Party more efficacious in the present period as > Peter Camejo was doing? if a section of Labor can get in motion around that > all the better. The thing to keep in mind about Lenin and the Bolsheviks is > that they had their roots in Russian Social Democracy and were a mass party > of a quarter million members with roots in the labor movement in 1917, not > an isolated group of intellectuals giving lectures on dogma. Louis Proyect > has opined on these issues most aptly on his blog on a number of occasions. This is progress. You've identified a group (the Green Party) as a possible prescription for what ails a "section of _Labor_", not the working class, mind you, but "Labor". Moreover, you named a perfect example of the type of "leadership" that could deliver the goods for the "Greens" (and the Reform Party, really)when it came to a "section of _Labor_": Peter Camejo, a once-upon-a-time Trotskyist-turned social democrat! History indeed repeats itself. I have no doubt about it. This is progress! Thank you! ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: [email protected] Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
