Max: >As often we have taken a detour, this time into the Smith Act. >Bottom line is, did the SWP encourage workers to serve in the >armed forces to fight the Axis, or not? If not, as I've said >before, that was a honorable position but debatable, especially >with the benefit of hindsight. Of course they did. Jimmy Kutscher had his legs blown off during a German torpedo > >Later in the post, after bloviating about "freedom of speech" >(another of the lost M-L virtues, yuk yuk) and vampirism, we get: > >> Ironically, during WWII CPUSA leaders took the same stance as >Max does today. They identified the interests of the workers with >the war aims of the >superrich. > > >This was slander then and it is now, though I would criticize >what I understand to have been the CP's support for repression of >left critics of the war by the U.S. govt. This bit them on the >ass later. > >Then we get an apologia for Japanese militarism/imperialism, >which I submit was *worse* than the U.S., tho the comparison of >the US-UK with the Nazis is much more stark: > >> US soldiers died by the tens of thousands in the Pacific >theater to make the region safe for rubber, oil, banking, >construction, railroad and shipping companies. We resented >another vulture--Japan--picking at the flesh of China, the >Philippines, and other of our post-1898 conquests. > > >Finally we get close to the point: > >> Furthermore, the SWP advocated a revolutionary armed struggle >against >Hitler modeled on the Spanish Civil War popular militias. They >argued that >armies under ruling-class leadership with their officer corps >would not be >as effective as those under working-class control. > > >Sounds like refusal to serve to me. As a confirmed >induction-dodger (I was drafted but classified 1-Y), I would not >criticize the refusal on moral grounds. I would, with the >benefit of hindsight, say it was the wrong decision. Louis has >the benefit of hindsight too, but seems to make little use of it. > >The idea of workers' militias as a substitute for the Allied >Expeditionary Forces is an agreeable fantasy, nothing more. > >mbs > > Louis Proyect (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)
