Yoshie:
... we'd be singing Hallelujah if we were bringing in as many people to weekly Marxist meetings nationwide as the PCUSA does to its services . . . if we had weekly Marxist meetings, which we don't!
so what is to be done?
BTW, the PCUSA operates on bottom-up representative democracy (see its structure at <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presbyterian_Church_(USA)#Governing_bodies>), congregations choosing their own pastors, electing their own leaders (called elders), electing moderators and clerks of presbyteries (the next level of governing body), which in turn elect commissioners who attend general assemblies, where national leaders get elected, national and international issues -- such as divestment from Israeli apartheid -- get discussed at length*, and decisions are made. When they make decisions, they have enough finance to act on them, and they are big enough to get into the major media. The way they do their business is a whole lot more democratic than Marxist sects, organized labor, formerly and actually existing socialist states, and so on have conducted themselves, and they are more of an activist-membership organization than secular organizations on the Left are in the United States. * This year, the PCUSA's General Assembly even saw a swarm of Jewish lobbyists, from both the pro- and anti-divestment camps!
where do I sign up? do I have to be Christian? Protestant? Presbyterian? Okay, since that's out of the picture, how do the Unitarian-Universalists compare? I used to be one of them (and got married by a U-U minister, Phil Zwerling, a very progressive guy [*]). I dropped out of the U-Us in the 1970s because I couldn't see the point of going to church without believing in god, goddess, gods, goddesses, or a combination of the above. Recently, however, I figured the U-Us out: it's a form of secular Protestantism, an analog to Sholem's secular Judaism. [*] he was okay with my in-laws because he looks Jewish. me:
> According to Hal Draper, > Marx was the only thinker to advocate the collective and democratic > self-liberation of the working class as both a means and an end (a > principle that can be extended to other dominated groups).
Yoshie:
The point forgotten by a majority of Marxists. :->
yup. Yoshie had written:
> > In the end, though, it has to be workers, women, ethnic minorities, > > etc. themselves who press for room for their own self organization, > > push for their demands, etc.
me:
> this is a valid point, but one-sided. It ignores the problem with > those in state power. In power, parties of various sorts (social > democrats, CPs, Christian Democrats, etc.) not only tend to embrace > top-down methods of rule (especially when under attack from foreign > powers). They also tend to undermine grass-roots organizations' > independence, turning them into conveyor belts for the party line. > This is especially true if the party has a monopoly over state power. > It's not just the rebellion from below; it's also the co-optation from > above. Leaders of the grassroots are often brought into the official > hierarchy and loose their connections with the movements that created > them as leaders.
Yoshie:
Yes, that's the problem of corporatism, and that tends to be the destination of revolutions outside the West (and maybe inside the West, too, if we ever get to see one here). Since resistance to corporatism can't be expected to come from leaders, it has to come from masses. No one knows how it can, though.
leaders can be held accountable for not resisting careerism and corporatism. Yoshie had said:
> > And that's supposing that critical > > masses of workers, women, ethnic minorities, etc. themselves -- not > > just small segments of them -- already have the desire to do so, which > > may not be the case at present in Iran, though Iran, it seems to me, > > sees more strikes, demonstrations, etc. than many other Middle Eastern > > countries. [evidence?]
me:
> I presume that these strikes, etc., when not actually organized by the > government or the political-religious establishment, are against said > government or establishment. I also presume that the latter are > treated very differently from the former, i.e., suppressed.
Yoshie:
I'd love to see solid comparative stats on work stoppages, demonstrations, etc. in the Middle East. Based on journalistic accounts alone (both from the mainstream and left-wing media), though, I have heard about strikes and demonstrations in Iran a lot oftener than I have heard of them in the rest of the Middle East, but that may be due to reporters' 'biases. Strikes and demonstrations self-organized by workers and others are not approved and are often suppressed by the Iranian government, just as they are in the rest of the Middle East, but Iranian workers and other activists seem to me to be a lot more rebellious than those in, say, Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Yemen, and so on, to say nothing of those in the Gulf states.
maybe they have good reason to be "a lot more rebellious," e.g., they're more oppressed? After all, the Khomeini regime rode to power partly by suppressing the left, including independent trade unions. me:
> > > BTW, Sholem is part of national and international organizations of > > > similarly-minded Jews. > > > > How big is Sholem? > > a few hundred. I don't know how big the national and international > organizations are. I thought it's something like that.
FWIW, Sholem has been around since the McCarthy era. It's got longevity on its side. There are also a bunch of other secular-Jewish groups around, like ethical culture. -- Jim Devine / "Advocates of capitalism are very apt to appeal to the sacred principles of liberty, which are embodied in one maxim: The fortunate must not be restrained in the exercise of tyranny over the unfortunate."-- Bertrand Russell
