[Marxism] About Chui Choy and Sío, the SWP, Babylon 5, the antiwar movement, and some other stuff

[Lüko Willms]

On Wed, 21 Nov 2007 10:46:48 -0500, Joaquin Bustelo wrote:

> It was not my intention, not is it what I think, that electoral 
> and parliamentary activity should REPLACE mass mobilizations 
> and other protests.

  I'm glad to hear that. 
  
  But you certainly remember, that in every even year, when elections 
were on the agenda, electoral cretinism sucked many activists out of the 
committees for mass action into the electoral activity. 

  And you also remember, and live thru it these days too, what an 
increased effort is needed to keep the course towards mass 
mobilisations; nevertheless they have always been smaller in election 
years then in others. 

> But there is a natural evolution in the development 
> of a social or protest movement, and most of all around 
> and issue or problem as central to the political life 
> of the country as the Vietnam War was in those years. 

  As I wrote: the mass action carries in itself the germs of 
insurrection, of a revolutionary taking of power. 

> At a certain point attention turns from pressuring, 
> cajoling and so on those that are in office 
> to the issue of who is in office. 

  Well, that is the opposite: here you are not talking about who has the 
power, but who is the officer of the powers that be. 

  That is the diversion from tackling the class dictatorship of capital 
to the seeking of offices in the capitalist state apparatus. Who has 
office, does not have power. 

  And that is what always was the inevitable outcome of "taking the 
antiwar movement into the electoral arena in alliance with the other 
social and protest movements" as "the obvious next step" as you wrote. 

  You do not believe, that the the broad alliance of the anti-war 
movement from the "Weatherman underground" via Jerry Rubin and 
A.J.Muste, Dave Dellinger, the SWP and CP up to Eugene McCarthy, which 
had no real agreement on the clear-cut demand of "Out now", would agree 
on that demand as the central election slogan? You are not dreaming, are 
you? 

  Well, if you could find other forces outside of the SWP who were 
prepared to campaign on the basis of sticking to mass mobilisations and 
immediate and unconditional withdrawal of the US military from Vietnam, 
then those forces should have approached the SWP to form a common 
electoral platform. Have such forces existed? I don't know of any. 

  To repeat, the mass demonstration in the street carries in itself the 
growing over into an insurrection to take power. And the demand for 
immediate and unconditional withdrawal of the empire's armed forces from 
a war theater is the beginning of the disarming of the enemy class. 


Comradely yours, 
Lüko Willms
Frankfurt, Germany
--------------------------------
visit http://www.mlwerke.de Marx, Engels, Luxemburg, Lenin, Trotzki in German