Re: Trump doubles down on his plan to steal the November election; where is the opposition?
Reimann says he is not proposing to wait for spontaneity, only stating perspectives. But in the tradition both of us come out of, a perspectives document has a fixed grammar: it moves from the objective situation to the tasks that follow from it. A perspective that ends without tasks is an invalid perspective. It is a mood. Reimann's ends with the Yellow Vests as "the best to be hoped for here." Hope is not a category of strategy. Whatever we call it, a prognosis whose active verb belongs to an eruption outside all existing organizations is a prognosis of spontaneity. And the Yellow Vests are the wrong hope for this danger in particular. The movement is instructive for its limits. It had no durable organization, no anchor in production, no mechanism for political generalization, and it dissipated without conquest while the right fished in it. It could occupy roundabouts. It could not have stopped a seized count, because stopping a seized count requires a purchase on the state or on production, and it had neither. Only organized labor holds that lever. There is no route to the political strike that bypasses the unions, however bureaucratized; however alienated the members. If the American Yellow Vests are the ceiling, we have already conceded the fight I described. On DSA, I fully trust Reimann's account. The controlled agendas, the pep rally conference, the campaign staff brushing off a man who has lived in the district since 1969, and the indifference to the Black working class of Oakland. All of it rings true, and all of it is damning. But the inference is wrong. The purpose of a resolution campaign is not to win the vote on first presentation, and it was never premised on the receptivity of the apparatus. It is premised on the existence of a rank and file the apparatus does not fully control. The point of forcing the question is polarization: to identify and cohere the minority who can be organized, the people who will actually staff the defense committees in November. That minority exists. The convention fights, the caucus debates, and the contested elections exist because members disagree with their leaderships. If Reimann's answer is that even this minority is a mirage, then the conclusion is not the Yellow Vests. The conclusion is that there is no subject at all, and perspective writing becomes a literary exercise. The same holds for the unions. The alienation of members from the bureaucracy is the oldest fact in the American labor movement. It was true in 1933, on the eve of the greatest union upsurge in our history. The wildcat Reimann led in 1999 is itself the proof that alienated members can move, and his expulsion is the proof that the bureaucracy fears them. Both prove the work is possible. Both prove it is contested. That is what work in a hostile terrain looks like. Charles asked the right question: Who is organizing defense lines at the polls and escort of the tallies? David gave the right answer: the unions have the machinery. The only open question is the mechanism of pressure. Individuals writing letters to the internationals will be filed. Locals passing motions, CLC delegates raising the demand, and DSA branches forcing emergency meetings onto their leadership—these are at least channels. Miserable instruments, but they are the only ones that exist. The resolution is not a talisman. It is a sorting device. It finds the people. Reimann diagnosed the vacuum. He now argues the vacuum cannot be filled. If both claims were true, the appropriate genre would be memoir, not perspectives. I accept the first and reject the second. Self-emancipation is not a bet that the class will move. It is the discipline of building where the class can move in advance, so that someone is present when it does. -- Tony -- Tony -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#42546): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/42546 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/120334411/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/13617172/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
