Can a goon be a socialist?
Stephen R. Diamond
recently rested on the charge it uses force against the left.
I have seen no proof of this charge, but let's, only for the sake of
argument, assume it true. I suppose it is not surprising that the social
pacifists of IS, who on this ng have supported gun control, invoke force
against the left as a basis for reading a tendency out of the workers
movement.
Everyone knows that the Stalinists, who read the Trotskyists out of the
workers movement, employed force against the so-called agents of the
bourgeoisie. This fact, even the fact that Trotsky knew Stalin wanted to
employ the supreme act of violence against him personally, did not result
in Trotsky reading the Stalinists out of the workers movement.
The labor bureaucracy uses goons. Are they not part of the workers movement?
The IS shows the same impressionism on the question of membership in the
workers movement as it shows on the nature of Stalinism!
Stephen R. Diamond
David Stevens
Stephen R. Diamond wrote:
>
> Everyone knows that the Stalinists, who read the Trotskyists out of the
> workers movement, employed force against the so-called agents of the
> bourgeoisie. This fact, even the fact that Trotsky knew Stalin wanted to
> employ the supreme act of violence against him personally, did not result
> in Trotsky reading the Stalinists out of the workers movement.
>
> The labor bureaucracy uses goons. Are they not part of the workers movement?
>
> The IS shows the same impressionism on the question of membership in the
> workers movement as it shows on the nature of Stalinism!
Stephen's argument is important. The same logic applied to
my class-line defense of the ISO when they were threatened
by fascists in San Francisco.
Comrades of a.p.s.t. know I once witnessed the ISO's assault
on a member of my own household. I am NOT an impartial observer
of their thug violence and goonery; I dislike the ISO intensely.
So why should I volunteer to serve on a goon squad to defend a
meeting held by ISO?
Similarly, I am an irreconcilable opponent of ISO's program.
I consider it as openly counterrevolutionary as that of the
Stalinists, the social democrats, or the trade union bureaucracy.
ISO hostility to revolutionary Cuba, for example, puts them
on the side of the US Department of State against almost every
other tendency or independent militant aspiring to Marxism.
Why risk taking physical lumps for counterrevolutionaries?
The answer to both questions is the same: because the ISO,
for all of its pathologies, is PART OF THE LABOR MOVEMENT.
Not just the "socialist" movement; as Diamond points out,
the labor movement includes the labor bureaucracy, which
is decidedly anti-socialist. I do not read Bill Kaufman's
rants ... but not even Kaufman's liberal-Green politics place
him outside the labor movement (even if he did not claim to
be a socialist; Kaufman's political judgements are irrelevant).
In June 1998, there was a racist assault on a minority
couple in San Francisco's Haight Ashbury district. The
ISO called for a demonstration in response.
Unfortunately, the ISO leaflet gave out the personal
phone number of an ISO member. That member was deluged
with death threats from White Power fascists.
The ISO then determined to hold a public meeting.
They asked the IWW to provide a defense squad to ensure
that they would be able to hold their meeting without
disruption from the fascists threatening their comrade.
All of us serving on the defense squad were aware of
ISO's own record of violence and exclusionism. We made
it entirely clear to the ISO that we would not serve as
their ideological goons, that this would be one "public"
meeting from which they could not exclude workingclass
opponents, nor chase away the sellers of rival sectarian
newspapers.
The ISO held its meeting. (No fascists appeared; the
closest I saw personally was a cop who saluted me with
his middle finger as he drove slowly around the building).
As I wrote in this forum in 1998 [1]:
-> There's something funny about me -- or the Wobs -- helping
-> to defend a "public" meeting of an organization which in the
-> past has excluded workingclass oppositionists from precisely
-> such ostensibly "public" meetings, using physical force in
-> the form of such goon squads as ourselves.
->
-> But there's a difference between an opponent and an enemy.
-> Sometimes, ISO has forgotten this ... Any socialist who'd
-> refuse to defend ISO on this one ... whether because of ISO's
-> own intolerance of political criticism or because of their
-> pink gusano brand of State Department "socialism" -- would be
-> as sectarian as the ISO itself.
And that's the bottom line. The counterrevolutionary politics
of the ISO -- and even the ISO's shameful record of goons and
thugs to "answer" political arguments -- do not place the ISO
outside the workers movement.
- David Stevens
[1] "Peeing in the Pool -- (and I Was a Goon for the ISO)"
by David Stevens [Tue, 29 Sep 1998 17:27:08 GMT]
in news:alt.politics.socialism.trotsky
Hunter H. Watson
<stephend15-03...@user-2iniu21.dialup.mindspring.com>,
Stephen R. Diamond <steph...@mindspring.com> wrote:
> The IS argument that the SL is not part of he socialist movement has
> recently rested on the charge it uses force against the left.
>
> I have seen no proof of this charge, but let's, only for the sake of
> argument, assume it true. I suppose it is not surprising that the social
> pacifists of IS, who on this ng have supported gun control, invoke force
> against the left as a basis for reading a tendency out of the workers
> movement.
>
> Everyone knows that the Stalinists, who read the Trotskyists out of the
> workers movement, employed force against the so-called agents of the
> bourgeoisie. This fact, even the fact that Trotsky knew Stalin wanted to
> employ the supreme act of violence against him personally, did not result
> in Trotsky reading the Stalinists out of the workers movement.
>
> The labor bureaucracy uses goons. Are they not part of the workers movement?
Lenin used goons. Certainly they were part of the workers movement?
>
> The IS shows the same impressionism on the question of membership in the
> workers movement as it shows on the nature of Stalinism!
>
> Stephen R. Diamond