No subject

"bearing witness" approach to politics. 

The labor magazine being referred to is not published or sponsored by
Solidarity. Solidarity members take part in it just as they might in a union
local's paper. But for the life of me I can't imagine what articles
"endorsing socialist politics" would look like in the United States today in
that sort of publication or one put out by an antiwar group or an immigrant
rights group.

Chegitz says, "The purpose of socialists isn't to organize workers simply to
get better contracts." But the relationship of the socialist movement to the
union movement has ALWAYS included that as a component. Historically,
socialists have been among the leading organizers of unions as we have a
clearer vision of the antagonism between the employing class and the working
class and are much less likely to be fooled or tricked.

What is extraordinary in the United States is the extremely low level of
organizing "simply to get better contracts," so to speak, and that this
situation has persisted for decades. 

Solidarity is one of the few left groups that has actually thought about and
tried to understand the reasons for this situation and tailored its work
accordingly.

Whatever the merits or demerits of Soli's "rank and file strategy" in the
labor work, I am convinced it is far superior to preaching, i.e. "talking
socialism on the job." I also don't believe general socialist propaganda
aimed at this sector, like newspaper sales or election campaigns, are worth
much, and I've seen and heard of enough cases where this did more harm than
good that I am very leery of it.

I think the experience of many different groups has shown that such general
socialist propaganda is useful and does have an effect, but mainly among the
intelligentsia and especially college youth. To carry out this work
effectively among this layer, "socialist election campaigns" are quite
unnecessary and more of a hindrance than a help.

I'm generally not in favor of the sorts of "socialist election campaigns"
that have been run in recent years. I think by their nature they rarely
advance motion towards independent political action by working people.
Although a central message is often that working people need to break with
the two party system, they come across as strange, esoteric and often as
unserious (which indeed, they are) tainting the message of political
independence with associations that would be better avoided.

Obviously, I completely disagree with chegitz that the green party is just
one more bourgeois party no different from the Democrats and Republicans. I
think the major Green and other independent campaigns of the past few years
indicate that there are the beginnings of a base for a party of working
people. Moreover THIS -- not the simon-pure programmatically pristine
"socialist election campaigns" -- is what actual motion toward political
independence by working people looks like. 

Leaving aside my other misgivings about "socialist" election campaigns, the
very significant vote totals obtained by Nader in recent years (together
with McKinney this last time), as well as a number of the local races (like
those of Peter Camejo and Matt Gonzalez) suggest to me that it was a
political error for socialist groups to counterpose "their own" candidates
to these. 

Some groups, of course, did it on the basis of sectarian "principles" (in
bourgeois electoral farces, no less!) while others saw no significance to
the election other than a chance for self promotion. 

I also disagree with chegitz's attitude towards independent candidates. His
dismissal of sister Cynthia McKinney as "a woman who claimed that 5,000
prisoners were taken from New Orleans after Katrina and secretly executed in
the Louisiana bayou," shows he is probably from the section of the
population that would find a claim that the US government committed genocide
against people like him to be absurd. Sister Cynthia is not from that
demographic. 

But despite attempts to make her look like some sort of crackpot, she
*repeatedly* won re-election to the U.S. Congress from Georgia's 4th
Congressional District, showing her ability to make a program of radical
socio-economic change accessible to working people, and the only way they
got her out of Congress was using Georgia's racist open primaries so that a
combined mobilization of white Republican and white Democrat votes and
out-of-state money could deny her a spot on the ballot in the fall.

If Chegitz ever visits these parts, he will find sister Cynthia is held in
the highest regard by people  like the leaders of the immigrants rights
movement, of the fight against the death penalty, the most progressive
elements in the labor movement, etc.

Another part of Chegitz's critique of Soli reads, "The organization prides
itself on being able to have a high percentage of women and people of color
showing up for one of its conferences. This would be truly impressive, had
it not done so by having a quota on the number of white men who could
attend." 

I'm not sure what event Chegits is referring to. It would not have been one
held when I was in the group. But at any rate, this is something that needs
to be given more thought, independently of whether Soli did something
wonderful or horrible or was just mostly fooling itself.

The U.S. socialist left is overwhelmingly drawn from the intelligentsia.
This is not an accusation or a condemnation. I would not even say it is a
weakness that needs to be remedied, as I might have a few years ago. I now
believe that it is simply a reality we have to work with. But that includes
realizing this.

The sector of the working class where there is more radicalism is among the
oppressed nationalities. Even here much of the leadership and front-line
troops have been drawn from the intelligentsia, but it is entirely
understandable that in these sector the radicalization has been deeper,
broader, much more firmly rooted among the masses and shaped by them.

Who is in the room very much affects the conversation. For example,
Solidarity's rules require that all leadership bodies be half women and
that, in effect, women be given preferential treatment in  calling on
comrades to speak. The same sorts of considerations that led to the adoption
of these rules in Solidarity --which I've never heard a complaint against,
quite the contrary-- might lead one to  be quite conscious about the
national and gender composition of those attending a summer cadre school or
other event. 

I'm not sure that Chegitz is right in saying that having a high percentage
of Blacks and Latinos at some event "would be truly impressive" if this
hadn't been consciously organized. On the contrary, what I find impressive
is that it *was* consciously organized. And I hope that in addition to
discriminating against whites and males, the comrades also took into account
that it is often necessary to discriminate against anyone born before Jimmy
Carter was president.

I'm sorry to hear that Chegitz believes himself to have been "expelled" from
Soli. I think this entitles him to a certain leeway in overstatement and
overheated rhetoric. But I find it hard to believe. Soli never expels anyone
for anything. My suspicion is that he was dropped from membership for
non-payment of dues. Now, in some OTHER group that may have been quite
intentional as a political reprisal or action. But in Soli, while it can't
be theoretically excluded, the likelihood that the national "apparatus" was
running coherently and consciously enough to do something like this,
singling out one comrade, is not high, at least not in my experience.

Joaquin