In a message dated 2/22/2010 12:48:30 P.M. Pacific Standard Time,
cb31...@gmail.com writes:
Not everybody is on same page by: Sam Webb February 18 2010 tags:
communists, strategy and tactics
Let me begin with the obvious: the left (organized and unorganized) has
seldom been of one mind. Differences over aims, strategy, tactics,
programmatic demands, forms of struggle, etc. have been commonplace.
This moment is no different. In fact, I would argue that two distinct and
competing trends have taken shape in the course of the first year of the
Obama presidency.
Comment
Same page? Actually, a tiny segment of sectarian Marxist writers -
perhaps numbering two - three hundred virtual personalities, are not only on a
different page but in an entirely different book.
The issue is not so much ones attitude towards the Obama administration,
but ones conception of reality. Where one might charge Webb with “to much
reality” and/or an incorrect view of actual political relations between
Democrats and Republicans and their relationship with the voters, the
sectarian
Marxists are well, sectarian and trapped in the reproduction of their own
sectarianism. Since the founding of the American communist movement, it has
been proven to be impossible to fight the quality called the bourgeois mode
of commodity production or capitalism, or “the two party system,” or the
administration. It doesn't mater what the administration.
The communist movement grew during periods of social upheaval, fighting on
the basis of real issues dear to the hearts and minds of the proletarian
masses. This was most certainly true during the period of the fight for
unions; then industrial trade unions and the great struggles for Civil Rights,
defining the last period of social upheaval. One cannot fight within a
social system on the level of the system’s existence. The social system is a
quality. The quality is capitalism. The political quality is the government
and its ruling party's. Opposing Obama as a bourgeois representative means
next to nothing.
If one cannot fight the quality defined as capitalism, then common sense
demands that one must fight and deal on the quantitative level, with
specific stages of development and locating what is unique and important to
the
actual phase of the social process one is living. It is useless to charge
anyone associated with Marxism for failing to recognize that the American
state and government is an instrument of the capitalist class, serves
bourgeois
property, and Obama is simultaneously the head of state and government as
president.
One has to fight on a quantitative level. Not because I say so, but
because there is no “other game in town,” except the various fronts of
struggle
for survival taking place. The unique skills of communists as organizers
are need at every front of struggle. For instance, in Detroit a struggle is
brewing involving auto workers and retired autoworkers with the state and
government, because General Motors and Chrysler are more than less owned by
the government. This quantitative level means a struggle over full
nationalization of auto is on the agenda. Not as a cure all but as a form of
immediate combat where a section of proletarians can discover how to fight for
their interest as a class. We can introduce this issue not because it sound
clever, but because two of the companies are partially nationalized already.
This means new ideas can be injected into society attached to a living
social process.
Not because I say so but because the government owns Chrysler and General
Motors rather than individual employers. Ford is not on the governments
dime so a somewhat different form of struggle is unfolding there, with a
massive rejection of the contract last year. The Chrysler and General Motors
workers have no contract fight they can reject as such. That is to say, the
fight is with the government.
This is an entirely new and different game.
Another such struggle is brewing over national health care. On the
quantitative level this means these same workers in Detroit, retired workers
at
General Motors and Chrysler, recently had their health care package
restructured and detached from the company. A VEBA has been established that
as it
exist is set to run out of money in as little as 36 months. VEBA went into
effect January 1, 2010 and out of pocket payments has risen at a monthly
rate of roughly 30% for the past two months. When VEBA was sold to the
autoworkers its was stated the fund would last roughly 80 years with an annual
rate increase of no more than 3%. Health care arises as a material issue in a
context where the government owns Chrysler and General Motors. The struggle
of these workers for health care is with the government rather than an
employer such as is the case with Ford. Unable to get anything from their
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