[Marxism] Gloria La Riva 16-city speaking tour

[Aaron Aarons]

>From: "Joaquin Bustelo" <jbustelo at gmail.com>
>Date: Thu, 9 Oct 2008 17:55:51 -0400
>Subject: Re: [Marxism] (no subject)
>
>"I have no reason to partiuclarly oppose Gloria La Riva's nominantion,
[SNIP]
>Well I DO have a reason. The existence and operation of these sects that seem to think ritual chanting of "socialism socialism socialism" will magically bring forth the day of its appearance is an obstacle to the emergence of a real socialist movement.

AA: One can say lots of things, good and bad, about La Riva and the PSL, but the charge that they 'seem to think ritual chanting of "socialism socialism socialism" will magically bring forth the day of its appearance' is off the wall. They are, after all, the main organizers of the ANSWER coalition, whose errors are generally opportunistic rather than sectarian.

>Running unserious, nano-campaigns for president by completely underwhelming candidates for the sole purpose of roping gullible innocents into the temples of whatever Gods they worship compounds the harm done by their existence.

AA: The ONLY purpose, from a socialist point of view, of running a candidate for CEO of the United Snakes of AmeriKKKa is to get one's views heard by people who might not hear them otherwise, and even to get some of those people involved in socialist, anti-imperialist politics. To call that "roping gullible innocents" is just a variant on old-fashioned red-baiting.

>Like all true philosophical idealists, they are completely immune to any reality-based argument. Eighty years after the founding of the Communist League of America by Jim Cannon and his friends, if it were possible to do what the (pseudo) Leninists claim, it would have been done, and several times over.

AA: The PSL are hardly Cannonites! And NOBODY on the left has done what either Cannon or his opponents on the left have wanted to do for the simple reason that the proletarians and peasants of the oppressed nations haven't been able to prevent their subsidizing of the bourgeois lifestyles of imperialist-country workers. Unfortunately, despite their vocal anti-imperialism, the PSL shares in the opportunist error of not acknowledging this fact.

>Joaquin

 - Aaron