[Marxism] Some questions for the ideological leaders of the Marxmail club

[Nick Fredman]

Louis Proyect:

> I don't really have that much to say except that it appears that the DSP
> comrades really have to think very hard about their long-term
> perspectives 

Well yeah everyone should think very hard about their long-term perspectives
quite frequently. We have by the way the same long term perspective as the
ISO, Bob Gould's new-found best practice Leninists, even if we have a
different set of tactics at the moment.

> since reflexive self-vindication can lead to disaster, as I
> have seen with my own eyes.

If you mean hubristic triumphalism, I don't think you'll find much of that.
Hopefully you aren't adopting Gould's habit of constantly and grossly
misrepresenting people, while never quoting or referencing them. That really
is arrogant, as well as unhelpful. In fact a content analysis would show
that "modest" is one of the more common terms in contributions from DSP
members on this and the GL list about their own work - I'm not sure how much
more humility you expect. The SA election campaign was useful if modest,
just as having 10 000 people regularly read Green Left in print and online,
when 15 million Australians are absorbed in the bourgeois media, is useful
if modest, just as getting 50 people to a socialist talk, when 5000 people
go to see the Delai Lama, is useful if modest.

If you mean defending your record, well that'd be boring if it's all one
went on about, but I think if someone, for example, claims that socialists
criticising the Labor Party leadership or standing in bourgeois elections in
a preferential system has definitely led to a level of sectarianism
identical to that of the Stalinists of 1928-33, and to utter isolation from
the broad left vanguard, it's fairly reasonable to point to some evidence to
the contrary. 

I've no big problem with our best practice Leninists' new found enthusiasm
for the Greens - it's better than their previous auto-Laborism - except
where it seems to led to hostility to other socialists. They used their
numbers to block Socialist Alliance from speaking at one anti-war election
forum in Melbourne, and attempted to do the same in Sydney - but were
outvoted by Greens and independents, perhaps one reason being that one SA
candidate was the movement's spokesperson for the anti-APEC rally. So
perhaps the question of isolation and sectarianism isn't so straightforward.