Who is David Stevens? A Challenge
Vngelis
arses endlessly and diverting every discussion into directions which
have as much relationship with the class struggle as he has with
reality.
Who are you Stevens? Who knows you in any movement in any labour
organisation?
Who have you ever argued with publically apart from posting crap on
here? Show us the url of any debates you have had? Which have been
published in any labour organisation?
You joined the Sparts for their sexual/psycho positions and you
pretend you are more Spart than the... Sparts.
Despite that you support both gay and islamic marriages and deranged
'rappers' who promote drugs to the youth (which you support). At least
you dont feel lonely on here. You have some backers. You need the
numbers, for your political positions are ...anything goes.
I mean who knows you on here?
You say you were in the Sparts but where is the verification?
Does Holmes know you or know of you?
Does David Walters?
I believe you might be like Big Fat Fuck before. An internet persona
whose sole aim is to divert issues and get people to spend time on
you.
If within 48 hours you produce no single url in any labour
organisation that you exist, then your card is up...
vngelis
nada
I think I met David on two occasions. Once was at anti war event where
he was passing out leaflets for the small CRFI group before I joined
it (I think).
David
Tom Cod
years ago?
Einde O'Callaghan
> Wasn't he the guy with the Trotsky, drugs, sex, rocknroll website
> years ago?
I believe so - although I'm not sure if they were in that order of
priority. ;-)
Einde O'Callaghan
David Stevens
>
> Wasn't he the guy with the Trotsky, drugs, sex, rocknroll
> website years ago?
I never got far on the rock and roll -- there were other
resources superior to any I might offer -- but Walters
had suggested it.
It started as a joke. Then, it sort of took on a life of its
own, due to what I thought was its power to utterly enrage
what Fred Ferguson used to call "Cotton Mather socialists."
But it really takes no great power of ideology to enrage the
petty-bourgeoisie. Everything in their existence drives them
to rage and recklessness.
- David Stevens
stephen
> Once was at anti war event where
> he was passing out leaflets for the small CRFI group before I joined
> it (I think).
>
Are the "U.S. Supporters of the CRFI" the same entity as Socialist
Organizer? Must say I much prefer the CRFI name.
The CRFI program contains some pretty good material relevant to the
discussions of the 1) class nature of the Russian state and 2)
"globalism." They reject the *terms* "globalisation" and
"transnational," while arguing that new forms of the international
domination of capital are developing, a development that accelerates
after the U.S. bubble bursting in 2002. Might be a good policy, at
least insofar as this process is predicated on the continuing and even
growing domination of U.S. capital. This seems perhaps the main
underlying difference between the Holmes/Stevens classical imperialist
perspective and the vngelis/Dusty/Walters(?) perspective, seeing the
development of new economic forms, although still within the
"imperialist" ambit.
srd
srd
nada
CRFI: Partido Obrero of Argentina. Based there and Greece (WRP). Only
really non-Morenoist current to survive among Argentine Trotskyism.
Socialist Organizer: part of the Fourth International//La Verite
(Lambert). No relation except the PO/CRFI above was part of the
Lambertists OCRFI back in the 1970s along with the Bolivian POR of
Lora.
The idea that there is a "vngelis/Dusty/Walters" *perspecitve* just
creeps me the fuck out.
David
Vngelis
>
> The petty bourgeoisie is impatient _because_ it is impotent.
>
> How else to interpret provocation with an ostensible 48-hour
> deadline? It shows a mind so disconnected from social reality that
> it can _literally_ believe people have nothing but a keyboard
> facing them in life. (I was away from APST for more than
> forty hours just this weekend. No doubt Gelis missed me
> more than I missed him).
David Stevens
Still cant produce a single article, a single argument, a single
presence in any ostensible labour organisations press.
48 hrs aint long enough? You want more time? Take a week. I am sure
you are busy...
vngelis
ross
news:721e4ff8-6d53-42fb...@p31g2000prf.googlegroups.com:
Politica Obrera (as they were then) were indeed present at the
Preconference, and hung out in the OCRFI along with the rest of us
reconstructionists until at least the Argentinian coup. Might have got
closer politically to "Jorge Rojo" if I'd been able to get through his
Argentinian-accented Spanish.
--
Ross in Toronto
David Stevens
>
>> Wasn't he the guy with the Trotsky, drugs, sex, rocknroll website
>> years ago?
>
> I believe so - although I'm not sure if they were in that order of
> priority. ;-)
So that newer readers don't feel left out, I should clarify:
It was more of a links page than a "real" website. Its only
substantive content was a FAQ for alt.politics.socialism.trotsky
which was _greatly_ expanded, improved, and "professionalized"
after evolving into the Encyclopedia of Trotskyism On-Line [*1*].
ETOL is nicely integrated with the Marxist Internet Archive [*2*],
which originated independently, back around 1990.
Thanks to the work of David Walters, Einde O'Callaghan, and
other patient, conscious volunteers, MIA is the single greatest
resource for Marxists on the Net. ETOL, a small part of MIA,
is better than what a half-dozen APST writers did.
- David Stevens
[*1*] http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/index.htm
[*2*] http://www.marxists.org/
David Stevens
Did Gelis' current troll remind you of an earlier one?
- David Stevens
--------------------------------------------------
From: meberr...@hotmail.com
Newsgroups: alt.politics.socialism.trotsky
Subject: Who Is Tcod?
Date: Sun, 29 Oct 2000 21:04:48 GMT
Message-ID: <8ti3de$32s$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: 212.228.155.50
A character named Tcod appears on apst makes a statement and dissapears
as soon as it is made. Whilst this is the general pattern of debate
amongst the US cdes, bar two, this isn't the general pattern of debate
amongst most of the rest of the world.
From what I have deduced Tcod is a middle class radical who supports
all the policies of the NATOist far 'left'.
Globalisation, imperialist immigration and the rights of 'ethnic'
minorities.
Whilst that is his privilige and one understands how busy people are in
todays world one can only add that the far '
left' has actally been behind the times on most political issues in the
last decade:
NATO expansion and war - none predicted it.
Globalisation - none understood the enormity of its implications
dismissing it as something which has gone on before.
Stalinism - many declared before the West in fact that imperialism has
won and capitalism restored in the East.
This is basically a summary of Tcod and everyother Tcod on apst...
meberry68
John Holmes
On Sun, 14 Sep 2008, Vngelis wrote:
>...
> You say you were in the Sparts but where is the verification?
He has never, to my knowledge, claimed to have ever been an SL member.
>
> Does Holmes know you or know of you?
Yes.
> Does David Walters?
Yes also, as he will surely point out.
>
> I believe you might be like Big Fat Fuck before. An internet persona
> whose sole aim is to divert issues and get people to spend time on
> you.
He is not a fraud like BFF. I will not comment on your second
assertion, as I am, frankly, not feeling terribly objective as to
this at the moment. At any case, it is certainly not his *sole* aim.
-jh-
David Stevens
(which I guess gives us both one up on Gelis).
(Q) What's more embarrassing than being left standing
at the altar?
(A) Being left standing at the altar by James Paris for
the MWG Summer Camp.
Gelis might oppose gay marriage. But there seems to be
at least one _queer_ marriage KDE was in favor of.
- David Stevens
nada
I've known John for years. I even participated in a strike at the SF
Newspaper Agency back in 1995 when he was there.
David
David Stevens
>
> He is not a fraud like BFF.
What can save my name from such defenders?
I dunno. Illumination, I guess.
Holmes' one and only co-ranter on his shameful "Marta Phillips"
Noske slurs against Dusty was: (drum roll) Big Fat Fuck,
masquerading as a supporter of the IG.
That was in June, 2008. I hadn't yet returned to APST, but
the Fat Fuck was enough of a provocateur to be disavowed
and denounced by the IG back in 2007.
Elucidatory conclusions:
(1) APST readers were already on notice that BFF was
a _provocateur_ and no kin to Norden, IG, or LFI.
_Holmes was willing to disregard that_, for the same
reason he started his shrill "Noske" thread against
Dusty in the first place.
(2) Stephen Diamond errs when he regards political
hygiene as an exclusively moral issue.
(3) Having written that Cde Holmes is the future face
of Latter Day Spartacism -- and offering Spartacist
readers an unpleasant reminder in pointing to Holmes'
Noske thread as John's permanent Usenet memorial
to Comrade Martha Phillips -- I must remind all
other readers that they are _not_ hearing the ICL
or Spartacists speaking for themselves.
Gramsci is on point, in his criticism of Bukharin:
For political elucidation, you don't aim for the
weak leg, you aim for the strong one. If one
aspires, as Gelis pretends to, to argue against the
Spartacists, you do not argue the straw man.
For me, lesson #2 looms large. YMMV.
- David Stevens
John Holmes
On Sun, 14 Sep 2008, David Stevens wrote:
>...
> (1) APST readers were already on notice that BFF was
> a _provocateur_ and no kin to Norden, IG, or LFI.
> _Holmes was willing to disregard that_, for the same reason he
> started his shrill "Noske" thread against Dusty in the first place.
...
I don't plan to discuss this stuff any further with Stevens, it is
pointless. But this is a point so elementary even Stevens should be
able to grasp it.
If he has studied APST in this period as thoroughly as he has implied,
he should have noticed that I did not exactly welcome BFF as a boon
comrade in the struggle, quite the contrary.
In fact, I was the one and only APST participant who did in fact point
out that he was probably a fraud of some kind when he reappeared on
APST, specifically referring to the IG's disavowal of him. Indeed,
Stevens's new ally Diamond I seem to recall denounced me as a
provocateur for slandering this fine socialist when I pointed this
out. Heck, I even think he challenged my memory as to the posting.
-jh-
David Stevens
> the Fat Fuck was enough of a provocateur to be disavowed
> and denounced by the IG back in 2007.
more exactly: denounced 12 December 2006.
- David Stevens
stephen
Why does Holmes imagine that what he "seems to recall" is newsworthy?
srd
rab
vngelis - This is a public newsgroup - anybody can post here.
Roger
David Stevens
> ...
> he should have noticed that I did not exactly welcome BFF as a boon
> comrade in the struggle, quite the contrary.
Calling BFF a "one and only co-ranter" is certainly a judgement
call. I think it was bad judgement for me to use it, because it
permits Holmes' implication of common sectarian purpose. Such
was not my intent; yet I have no right to expect better from this
NG's writers as a whole than what I am getting from Holmes.
So let me spell this out. (I ask for charity of interpretation from
comrades who can allow it. My brain was not overample even
before it faded from fatigue some hours ago).
Some participants in that discussion ranted in such a manner
as to be anti-elucidatory. It seems to me that only two were
consistently aiming to turn up the heat without commensurate
attempts to bring _some_ kind of illumination into the room.
I never claimed that Holmes embraced BFF as a bosum buddy
(Holmes is too much a sectarian anyway) and I never said they
argued the same points (they did not).
I wrote "_Holmes was willing to disregard that_," which
I now discard as defective: Holmes, from context, was
certain to infer that I meant "BFF as an allied sectarian
individual" rather than a metric of hygiene or temperature.
(What Holmes did was worse than "disregarding BFF,"
in my judgement; but I was not trying to make any part
of that as my point).
> In fact, I was the one and only APST participant who
> did in fact point out that he was probably a fraud of some
> kind when he reappeared on APST, specifically referring to
> the IG's disavowal of him. Indeed, Stevens's new ally
> Diamond I seem to recall denounced me as a provocateur
> for slandering this fine socialist when I pointed this out.
> Heck, I even think he challenged my memory as to the posting.
Perhaps I am impeded by failing to see matters of principle as
questions of dislike (Diamond) or alliance (Holmes).
But in the long run, I trust otherwise.
Holmes (responding to Walters calling BFF a fraud) gave
typically centrist evasions characterized by "somebody
claiming," "if," and the name of real-world Scott Solomon
as he attempted to provocateur-bait BFF without putting his
name to anything of importance to a non-commie formalist.
Diamond, who had solicited and published the IG's
denunciation of BFF seven months earlier, certainly
did not call BFF a "fine socialist." Diamond's entire
response, itself including the relevant part of Holmes',
is below.
- David Stevens
================
From: stephen <srdiam...@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: alt.politics.socialism.trotsky
Subject: Re: Where lies the continuity of Trotskyism?
Date: Sat, 21 Jun 2008 12:48:06 -0700 (PDT)
On Jun 20, 6:42=A0pm, John Holmes <jhol...@OCF.Berkeley.EDU> wrote:
> I don't know who this guy is either, I remember somebody claiming that
> the Norden group had publicly disclaimed him. If he is phony, my bet
> would be that he's the same as "Green Jeans," whoever that is. {My
> guess is Scott Solomon.)
No excuse under the light of workers democracy permits potentially
libelous comments, such as by Holmes, without checking the record,
which can be simply accomplished by a Google Groups search.
No one on apst much likes the Internationalist Tendency, but that's no
reason to return Fuck's former cop-baiting with your own loathsome
troll-baiting.
srd
Vngelis
And any one can be condemned for being pro-imperialist or being a
fraud.
Stevens alleged we dont exist, Walters chipped in to support him,
evidence is provided to the contrary, instead of retracting what he
said he continues unabaitedly.
I dont give a shit who posts on here, never have never will.
But clowns who are in no organisation and promote drugs for all, and
every form of sexual deviation and pretend they have found the 'new
transitional programme' will be attacked by me.
You obviously have your position of abstaining or trying to convert
nutters like BFF.
Your prerogative, not mine.
vngelis
rab
> And any one can be condemned for being pro-imperialist or being a
> fraud.
> Stevens alleged we dont exist, Walters chipped in to support him,
> evidence is provided to the contrary, instead of retracting what he
> said he continues unabaitedly.
> I dont give a shit who posts on here, never have never will.
>
> But clowns who are in no organisation and promote drugs for all, and
> every form of sexual deviation and pretend they have found the 'new
> transitional programme' will be attacked by me.
>
> You obviously have your position of abstaining or trying to convert
> nutters like BFF.
> Your prerogative, not mine.
> vngelis
I post sometimes in reply to people, but mainly for the 'silent
majority' who might just look for something about Trotskyism on here.
Not that they are likely to find it very often though.
Roger
rab
rab
> But clowns who are in no organisation and promote drugs for all, and
> every form of sexual deviation and pretend they have found the 'new
> transitional programme' will be attacked by me.
Drugs have a long and negative history in the working class movement
and the British imperialists fought a bloody war to force opium upon
the Chinese masses. They are overseeing the opium crop in Aghanistan
today.
However, since when has 'sexual deviation' in the general sense been
an enemy of the working class movement? (I'm not talking paedophiles
here which is a different matter).
Roger
nada
Roger, out of curiousity (and this goes for everyone reading this) do
you make a distinction between *types* of drugs?
For example, the following list are all 'drugs':
1. Heroin and other opiates.
2. Cocaine (white powder)
3. Crack (cyrtal cocaine)
4. Alcohol
5. Marijuana
Among the 5 listed above, the single biggest abuse comes from Alcohol.
By a HUGE factor in fact.
Personally, I think the first 4 represent a serious public health
crisis with huge political ramifications. I think it all has to be
delt with by a socialist public treatment of abuse. As I noted, the
FIRST thing that needs to be done is it's decriminalization of all the
above, it's regulation, treatment for addiction (for the first 4,
marijuana is non-addictive) and general social programs for drug users
with the intent of getting people off of drugs.
David
stephen
It took me a long time--four full days--to conclude BFF was an
imposter. Obviously he wasn't a member--I discovered that by e-mailing
the IG. But was he a supporter? I addressed this on June 24, 2008, the
same date I had earlier made a point I rather like. I acknowledged the
truth about BFF damages my argument.
First the good point, one I think is true, even though the evidence
was weakened:
On Jun 24, 2:04 pm, John Holmes <jhol...@OCF.Berkeley.EDU> wrote:
- Hide quoted text -
> On Tue, 24 Jun 2008, Daniele Futtorovic wrote:
> >...
> > 1) Dusty made no comment at all which would reasonably justify your tiny
> > outrage. The only thing you can possibly accuse him of would be not
> > canonising Ms. Phillips and demonising her assassin(s). In which he is
> > certainly right, as this is politics and not religion or romance.
> Huh? He said that the assassin might have thought she was CIA, so
> killing her was understandable on his part.
> I don't want to canonize or demonize anybody. But murder is murder,
> and murderers are murderers. And I knew her.
> > 2) You repeatedly said you considered APST as "a form of entertainment".
> > You are not entitled to rule over entertainment. If it displeases you,
> > change the pub. You are not entitled to demand seriousness from other
> > people when you don't take the discussions or the medium itself
> > seriously yourself.
> I did not call for a boycott of the bastard's postings, I plonked him.
> I didn't call for a boycott precisely because that would be taking
> APST too seriously.
> If you talk to him that's your lookout, I won't.
> Of course, if everyone here thinks Dusty's postings were fine and
> dandy, then damn right I'm changing pubs.
<
The vote is 2 to 0 with mine. What are our chances?
Holmes's PC/sectarian demand that the movement correspond to his
whims
rests on the same persecutory mentality as conspirativism and gay
rights. Note that Holmes fails to quote the "offensive" matter. Yet
he
delusionally asserts that Dusty implied that the murder was OK.
Dusty's comments cannot be taken to exonerate the murderer, because
Dusty doesn't claim to know the murderer's identity. Dusty only
suggested that the ICL's ineptitude brought about the slaying, which
is OF COURSE what Holmes tries to censor. While I disagree with Dusty
in that I think the restorationists are the presumptive murderers, I
certainly cannot rule out Dusty's theory.
One observation. We have two posters here currently who support a
Robertsonite orientation, Holmes and Fuck. Each of them is itching
for
a fight, when they, those they know, or their organization is
criticized. Fuck invited Walters to meet him "face to face"; Holmes
musters as much aggression as he can over the internet by typing
"PLONK." (Does anyone doubt he would be inclined to fight, if he
possesses adequate physical assets?) The Robertsonites defend the
ultra-reactionary fighting words legal doctrine on an introspective
basis!
srd
>>>
On Jun 24, 3:24 pm, Big Fat Fuck <bigfatphuc...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> > We really should introduce Holmes to some fascists, if he can treat
> > anyone worse than he has other apst posters.
> Here we have a violent provocation against Holmes. Are you trying to
> create a destructive set-up.
For Holmes or the fascists? I anticipated Holmes would nag them to
death.
> Sick, absolutly sick. And on a newsgroup
> devoted to Trotsky. My organization, the Internationalist Group has no
> time for such provactures.
<
You're obviously not a member. Do you think you do the IG a service
by
implying you are a member, when you are not? Your interpretation of
my
comment is so contrived that you prove Walters right. It just isn't
clear whether you are an imposter or a chump. I think imposter; a
chump would be humble enough to admit he was merely a sympathizer. My
guess is Green Jeans, who in turn is the (thankfully) departed Black
Dragon.
Unfortunately, that means I cannot rely on my Robertsonite
generalization based on Holmes and Fuck, because Fuck isn't real.
srd
>
srd
David Stevens
> ..
> It took me a long time--four full days--to conclude BFF was an
> imposter. Obviously he wasn't a member--I discovered that by e-mailing
> the IG. But was he a supporter? I addressed this on June 24, 2008,
I missed _every_ angle of that nuance. Even having read the posts in
question, I thought you decisively exposed BFF in December 2006.
It is to your credit that you didn't fly off the handle. But here, you
showed precision that (while admirable) is more than I would have
attempted. I consider that IG does not allow trash to sit by the door.
I figured you to "know" as much, if not officially, before you made
inquiry to the IG back in 1996. No IG (or supporter or symp) would
call you a provocateur, or threaten violence. [BFF v. Gelis, Walters,
and Holmes].
So I misread that context. (After I learned of BFF's provocation,
I enjoyed the luxury of hindsight).
> the same date I had earlier made a point I rather like. I acknowledged
> the truth about BFF damages my argument.
So does the truth against Holmes. Both data points were fraudulent:
One was an anti-IG provocateur, the other an _epigone_ of SL.
> .. <snip> ..
> One observation. We have two posters here currently who
> support a Robertsonite orientation, Holmes and Fuck. Each
> of them is itching for a fight, when they, those they know, or
> their organization is criticized. .. <snip> .. Holmes musters as
> much aggression as he can over the internet by typing "PLONK."
> .. <snip> ... The Robertsonites defend the ultra-reactionary
> fighting words legal doctrine on an introspective basis!
Your definition of Robertsonism is facially suspect. At best, you were
dealing with sad little mutant offspring, from which the health of parents
could not have been deduced.
I wasn't present to offer a counterexample. Am I, too, a Robertsonite?
(Is this why you paid the compliment of calling me a Cannonite?)
I cannot say I know more spartacoid stuff than some weak sister
you may call a Robertsonite. (Perhaps I am just a better student).
Physical violence is not part of the program, and in a more vital sense
is not part of the air they breathe or permit, even in Latter Days.
That was why, years ago, I could take a hard stance against the
ISO claims that the SL was "violent." Heck, the SL did not even
used to be so cowardly or passive-aggressive, back in the day.
In this sense, BFF was self-exposing as a total troll; and Holmes'
very passive aggression revealed himself as a weak-leg strawman,
with whom you could argue only if you truly enjoy a battle of wits
against the unarmed.
It might be that Holmes "ambush method" says something. If so,
I have a duty to aim my blows at a much stronger leg than Holmes.
By ambush method, here is an example of what I mean, from a
different context where Holmes ambushed Dusty with a cowardly
demagogue's stunt:
++
++ On Mon, 21 Apr 2008, dusty wrote:
++ > ...
++ > But the essence of the issue of "white Australia" was not
++ > race except in this way: working people in Australia always
++ > fought against either unfair competition (initially the fight
++ > against the continuation of convict transportation) or the
++ > oversupply of labour...
++
++ Comment unnecessary.
Comment was supplied -- not merely in a holmesianly literal
way by Holmes' self-refuting words, but by ripping Dusty's
words out of their living context. Big time.
Dusty had written two _detailed_ posts on the history of
workingclass immigration to Australia. Yet Holmes didn't
merely look for the weakest leg. He looked for termites to
undermine the wood, sawed it loose from the table, then
ambushed the result with his "no comment" comment.
If Holmes had been a principled socialist, he would have
sought out Dusty's true position to argue against, or else
kept his keyboard quiet. To falsely pretend engagement
serves an anti-elucidatory sectarian purpose (which was
of course what Holmes intended).
So it was "ambush," as in pretending to grapple with Dusty
when Holmes only wrestled with his own construct. And
it was cowardly. But you cannot conclude that the epigone
is even "introspectively" violent, unless you are the one to
assert the "fighting words" doctrine. I would prefer a
graphic expression unsuitable for comradely discourse,
to describe Holmes' indignities upon workers democracy.
I purposely chose an example limited in scope. (I do not
trivialize the slimier charges Holmes said against Dusty,
political falsehoods of a higher order). I believe this shows
the operation at a single-cell level, without the customary
"dead dog" stew.
It's merely a Usenet artifact, not a Robertsonite one:
I think Gelis is quite as bad as Holmes, but so much less
sophisticated that readers are unlikely to get sucked in.
Gelis, for example, still wants to claim I said the KDE was
not real. I said the KDE tried to join James Paris' MWG
as junior partner, their "bound volumes" are not in evidence,
and their "official" website is a guy's personal blog.
But I never said KDE was less real than any other group
hoping for James Paris to offer a shortcut to the Big Time.
An equivalent assertion by Homes would involve a larger
number of zombies and provide less reader amusement.
- David Stevens
Cannonite/Robertsonite-syndicalist-Luxemburgist-Realtrot
of the umpteenth recapitulation (Posadasista)
Vngelis
> Gelis, for example, still wants to claim I said the KDE was
> not real. I said the KDE tried to join James Paris' MWG
> as junior partner, their "bound volumes" are not in evidence,
> and their "official" website is a guy's personal blog.
>
> But I never said KDE was less real than any other group
> hoping for James Paris to offer a shortcut to the Big Time.
>
>
> - David Stevens
> Cannonite/Robertsonite-syndicalist-Luxemburgist-Realtrot
> of the umpteenth recapitulation (Posadasista)
You stated with Walters support we were non-existent, 2 in the whole
world.
Now you say we tried to join Paris group...
Then we have no bound volumes...
Nothing in English...
The bottom line is 48 hours have gone by, you haven't been in an
organisation for more than a decade and you pontificate from your
immoral high horse about all and sundry. If the Sparts attract people
like you then Holmes should deal with you. Instead he focuses on
Dusty, not because he can argue with him politically but precisely
because he cant.
Stevens you exist in your own imagination. Ask Roger for a
subscription for the Newsline as BFF did and I'm sure hell give you a
web page...
vngelis
stephen
>
> I wasn't present to offer a counterexample. Am I, too, a Robertsonite?
> (Is this why you paid the compliment of calling me a Cannonite?)
Yeah, I meant to include you, even though you aren't exactly a
follower, even of the IG. I would call you a Robertsonite the same way
I've called vngelis a Pabloite or David North a Healyite. And, yes,
Robertsonites are a species of Cannonites.
>
> I cannot say I know more spartacoid stuff than some weak sister
> you may call a Robertsonite. (Perhaps I am just a better student).
> Physical violence is not part of the program, and in a more vital sense
> is not part of the air they breathe or permit, even in Latter Days.
> That was why, years ago, I could take a hard stance against the
> ISO claims that the SL was "violent." Heck, the SL did not even
> used to be so cowardly or passive-aggressive, back in the day.
What about the NPAC Conference where the SL was physically expelled,
together with the Progressive Labor Party? The NPAC leadership
arranged for representatives of labor and also Democratic politicians
to address the conference. PLP demanded denial of the labor
bureaucrats and the Democrats' speaker spots. The SL blocked with PLP
on the Democrats, and would not desist in its demand for a vote by the
body. When the SL supporters refused to yield the floor, they were
physically removed, a process they physically resisted. I wasn't
there, but this description is consistent, I think, with the SL's
version.
The SL has long been capable of initiating violence while thinking
itself victim. The disturbing part of its adoption of the fighting
words doctrine (although I have not confirmed this position extends
beyond Holmes) is that it provides the SL with yet another way to
think itself the victim of violence within the left, while in the
process of themselves initiating it.
At NPAC, probably the SL did not think it was initiating violence
within the socialist movement, because it directed its attack against
the Democratic Party. What about the SWP, whose front was NPAC? Since
the SWP was in an alliance with a bourgeois party--I am extemporizing--
the SL would not regard it as functioning as a working class party at
NPAC. This is the consequence of its position that opposing to pop
front entails opposing any workers party in a programmatic alliance
with a bourgeois party.
srd
David Stevens
Here, my disagreement with you was extensive enough
that I must break it into bite sizes, some of which will take
a long time (months, if I am lucky).
You continue to aim for the weak legged epigone, whose
NPAC story in this newgroup was inconsistent with my own
admittedly too-limited understanding of the actual reports
from SL, PL, SWP, or WL. (I wasn't there, either).
I think you are walking into a smelly marsh swamp, with
only a Professor Kevin Murphy (genericized) to guide you:
> At NPAC, probably the SL did not think it was initiating
> violence within the socialist movement, because it directed
> its attack against the Democratic Party. What about the SWP,
> whose front was NPAC? Since the SWP was in an alliance
> with a bourgeois party--I am extemporizing-- the SL would
> not regard it as functioning as a working class party at
> NPAC. This is the consequence of its position that opposing
> to pop front entails opposing any workers party in a
> programmatic alliance with a bourgeois party.
You conflate, and its objective _result_ is calumny of a kind
that sets up the more militant sectors of our movement as
targets of repression. Whether on a picket line or on a
_go_ board, questions of initiative, "initiation," and defense
are non-trivial (and dialectical). Someday I will go there.
But not on the same day I go to NPAC, where it's fair to
say we could both profit from a higher quality of information.
I have written that the SL gave its electoral support to
SWP/US until the 1976 ("Bill of Rights") campaign.
That in itself is enough to refute the notion that SL
treated SWP as some popfrontish class Enemy back
in the good old days. I have no doubt that the SWP
had "bad feelings" about various 1964-1976 criticisms
from SL quarters, but that is not what _you_ are saying.
SL called for a vote to SWP during the gubernatorial
recall in California. If they have become more sectarian,
it still does not mean they treat other tendencies as Enemy,
it just means you won't see them working at MIA/ETOL.
(Nor do you see me. Walters and O'Callaghan and Co.
have great patience. I lost some capacity for tolerance,
the second time a Northite insisted on including the Healy
smears of Hansen as a Trotsky-killer).
We have disagreed on this before. (It may include one of
the times I accused you of "sleight of hand and mouth").
Perhaps we would disagree on a picket line, too.
But I rather hope not.
- David Stevens
David Stevens
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cthswSZ5AGI
When the Cowboy Church Sunday School version [1954]
is played at normal speed, 45 rpm, the vocal sounds
unnaturally high, like a little girl. Or maybe a chipmunk.
(It was recorded at 33.3 rpm by Stuart Hamblen's wife
and grown daughters).
Stuart Hamblen, of course, was also 1952 Presidential Candidate
for the Prohibition Party.
HTH,
- David Stevens
David Stevens
>
> > I wasn't present to offer a counterexample. Am I, too, a Robertsonite?
> > (Is this why you paid the compliment of calling me a Cannonite?)
>
> Yeah, I meant to include you, even though you aren't exactly a
> follower, even of the IG. I would call you a Robertsonite the same way
> I've called vngelis a Pabloite or David North a Healyite. And, yes,
> Robertsonites are a species of Cannonites.
(1). I think you err to call me Robertsonite. (Unlike you,
and others of the Labor Universe, I never met Robertson). You
have found me defending posititions similar to theirs, merely by
the default dim light of Usenet. One Spartacist theoretician
I hold great regard for is Joseph Seymour (whose pamphlet
against Maoism might have kept me from falling for any of
the state cap theories). Gelis is the only person I know of,
even from the loosey-goosey left, dim enough to presume
against Seymour on matters economic. (Even the bourgeoisie
recognized old Engels as a military expert. [*] ).
Anyway, if I am a Robertsonite in your taxonomy, does
your theory of spartacoid intellectual violence get refuted?
Perhaps I can learn to love Comrade Jim after all, if it
means I get to be your living counterexample.
(2). Fraserite (think "Kirk-Kaye") is surely accurate.
It is a species of Cannonite. All Robertsonites claim
to be a subspecies of Fraserite, a claim disputed by
FSP (but accepted in my own taxonomy); but I don't
think I am a Robertsonite in this sense, either.
I am a hell of a lot more a Fraserite than Holmes is.
(3). Both Spartacists and Internationalist Group would
possibly call me some kind of DeLeonist. (Not that I
see any point in asking). That is a characterization I would
dispute as firmly as I argued with "Redflag" (Christian C).
(4). It seemed strange that you called Walters a
syndicalist. I self-characterize as syndicalist. Perhaps
you and I mean different things by "syndicalist."
Some of my previous articles against Redflag and
New Union Party might be fruitful for me to pull.
I already mocked the IWW this month. Besides, in
terms of sheer membership cards, they are by far the
largest "revolutionary" organization in the US.
(5) I don't know where your characterization of me
as (quasi?) anarchist fits in to any of your taxonomy.
- David Stevens
[*] It didn't hurt that Engel's "Po and Rhine" [1859] was
originally published anonymously. The burghers spent a lot
of time trying to guess which of their generals had written it.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/po-rhine/index.htm
stephen
> I have written that the SL gave its electoral support to
> SWP/US until the 1976 ("Bill of Rights") campaign.
> That in itself is enough to refute the notion that SL
> treated SWP as some popfrontish class Enemy back
> in the good old days. I have no doubt that the SWP
> had "bad feelings" about various 1964-1976 criticisms
> from SL quarters, but that is not what _you_ are saying.
>
> SL called for a vote to SWP during the gubernatorial
> recall in California. If they have become more sectarian,
> it still does not mean they treat other tendencies as Enemy,
I'm only saying the SL follows its own line consistently, at least in
this matter of conditional non-support. In an election, if the
Stalinist are running on a popular front program together with the,
say, bourgeois Radicals, the Sparts would urge conditional non-support
to the Stalinists in the elections. That doesn't mean they will mount
a general anti-Stalinist boycott, that they will not form united
fronts with them, say over trade union issues. Similarly, when the SWP
allows Democratic speakers on the platform, the SL will not treat the
SWP as a working class tendency while that's going on. That doesn't
mean that in other environments they cannot form common fronts with
the SWP. At the conference, when the SWP physically defended the
capitalist politicians, it was, to the SL, not acting like a working
class party but was in practice defending a capitalist program,
espoused by capitalist politicians. Thus they deemed physical
resistance acceptable.
srd
stephen
>
> I think Gelis is quite as bad as Holmes, but so much less
> sophisticated that readers are unlikely to get sucked in.
>
> Gelis, for example, still wants to claim I said the KDE was
> not real. I said the KDE tried to join James Paris' MWG
> as junior partner, their "bound volumes" are not in evidence,
> and their "official" website is a guy's personal blog.
You don't really think it "just as bad" to lie about a nuance of a
trivial claim and to commit serious calumny? But I don't even think I
would call it a lie. (I still think Holmes is not a liar, despite my
recent use of hyperbole, shorthand, or other concocted
justification.)What were you trying to imply by your needling about
the "official" website, if not that no official website means no
organization? It seems a reasonable inference, even though it isn't
one I would make. I would put it like this: vngelis has greater
inductive enthusiasm than I.
>
> But I never said KDE was less real than any other group
> hoping for James Paris to offer a shortcut to the Big Time.
On what grounds do you to think they were discussing unification, no
less, under Paris's hegemony? I have never heard anything like that,
and it would surely be surprising, given that they disagree on exactly
the things each considers most important and ended by each considering
the other a fascist.
srd
stephen
> Stephen Diamond replied.
>
> Here, my disagreement with you was extensive enough
> that I must break it into bite sizes, some of which will take
> a long time (months, if I am lucky).
>
> You continue to aim for the weak legged epigone, whose
> NPAC story in this newgroup was inconsistent with my own
> admittedly too-limited understanding of the actual reports
> from SL, PL, SWP, or WL. (I wasn't there, either).
>
> I think you are walking into a smelly marsh swamp, with
> only a Professor Kevin Murphy (genericized) to guide you:
Agreeing with Murphy on anything is distressing. My hunch is Murphy is
at least as violence prone as the Sparts, and their justifications so
unaligned that they would come to blows.
>
> > At NPAC, probably the SL did not think it was initiating
> > violence within the socialist movement, because it directed
> > its attack against the Democratic Party. What about the SWP,
> > whose front was NPAC? Since the SWP was in an alliance
> > with a bourgeois party--I am extemporizing-- the SL would
> > not regard it as functioning as a working class party at
> > NPAC. This is the consequence of its position that opposing
> > to pop front entails opposing any workers party in a
> > programmatic alliance with a bourgeois party.
>
> You conflate, and its objective _result_ is calumny of a kind
> that sets up the more militant sectors of our movement as
> targets of repression. Whether on a picket line or on a
> _go_ board, questions of initiative, "initiation," and defense
> are non-trivial (and dialectical). Someday I will go there.
For reference, you asked in another post why I considered you a
Robertsonite. Positions like this one are defining of Robertsonite
thinking and unique to it. To tie this agreement to another part of
the same discussion, the NPAC issue brings out the anarchist component
in Robertsonite positions. Just as Robertsonites abolish the state
with legalization of drugs and (practically) open borders, they
abolish private property, in their equation of workers democracy with
non-exclusionism.
srd
rab
Yes, of course there are many distinctions. I was specifically
referring to opiates and drugs that cause serious ill health not
something some people might just take on a Saturday night. As to
alcohol, I like a few pints of beer every now and again although I
also know revolutionaries who are teetotalers but it is not
obligatory.
Then there is the notorious counter-revolutionary use of drugs and
psychiatric hospitals by the Soviet Stalinist bureaucracy which were
used to silence opponents of the regime.
This is a complex issue and it wasn't my main point against vngelis
who comes across as socially very conservative.
Roger
David Stevens
>
> > I think Gelis is quite as bad as Holmes, but so much less
> > sophisticated that readers are unlikely to get sucked in.
>
> > Gelis, for example, still wants to claim I said the KDE was
> > not real. I said the KDE tried to join James Paris' MWG
> > as junior partner, their "bound volumes" are not in evidence,
> > and their "official" website is a guy's personal blog.
>
> You don't really think it "just as bad" to lie about a nuance
> of a trivial claim and to commit serious calumny?
OF COURSE NOT: and I said so explicitly. My "just as bad"
referred to Holmes' ambush "No comment neccessary" comment,
which I reproduced in that post.
I made it quite clear that it was a dishonest treatment of Dusty,
but that it was _not even of the same order_ as the calumnies.
> But I don't even think I would call it a lie. (I still think
> Holmes is not a liar, despite my recent use of hyperbole,
> shorthand, or other concocted justification.)What were you
> trying to imply by your needling about the "official" website,
The real issue is KDE's bound volumes, which Gelis
claimed KDE had to cover their publications the same way
the Spartacists have done for about forty years. I was even
willing to accept his claim at face value -- who would LIE
about something like that? -- when I praised Gelis for what
I called an "admirable" and elucidatory practice.
It looks like I was suckered. (I hate to be suckered,
especially for the record). Because if there is no way to
order the volumes in the real world, there are really
no "bound volumes" for the public.
> if not that no official website means no
> organization?
I would have expected an official website to allow workers to
order their own copies. The Sparts do, of course. [*]
Nobody makes Holmes pull out his seltzer bottles, and nobody
forced Vngelis into his bizarre claim of KDE bound volumes.
Gelis does not need a website -- the Spartacists did not have
one for more than thirty years -- to sell bound volumes.
Gelis could have posted ordering information here on
this newsgroup. He still can.
> On what grounds do you to think they were discussing
> unification, no less, under Paris's hegemony?
It was "MWG Summer School." It was not the same as a
marriage, but also not the same as the summer camp I attended
as a Boy Scout.
> I have never heard anything like that, and it would surely
> be surprising, given that they disagree on exactly the things
> each considers most important and ended by each considering
> the other a fascist.
Yeah. I thought it would impress you much as it did me.
KDE has only a total of five polemics posted in English.
Paris' MWG merits one! But Gelis' critique did not come
until after he got stood up at the altar.
http://www.evangelos12.btinternet.co.uk/polemics.htm
- David Stevens
[*] bound volumes http://www.icl-fi.org/otherlit/bvol.html
nada
I don't think the KDE ever had a newspaper. Bound volumes of
'what'? ... exactly please?
D.
David Stevens
>
> I don't think the KDE ever had a newspaper. Bound volumes of
> 'what'? ... exactly please?
Yes, thanks: Since it _was_ his self-inflicted challenge, I should
repeat the original Gelis claim (showing where I got suckered).
from my reply to Gelis [11 Sept 2008]:
++
++ > All the editions of the KDE are also in bound volumes
++ > and publically available, so what?
++
++ It is not a "so what." I applaud KDE for devoting the resources
++ to do that. (From the stuff you post, I had not even realized the
++ KDE press was an active one).
++
++ It is commendable, because it is elucidatory. ...
I guess my "elucidatory" was premature. Because Gelis just
steered us to his website.
I criticized the website: no bound volumes in evidence,
and the link to "real" KDE apparently broken.
So Gelis offered us another website, which I thought was
supposed to be a "real" KDE from Greece. But it was
just a personal blog where "anything goes," and no Party
discipline is even involved -- Gelis volunteered to us that
he just lets strangers walk in to post stuff on the wall.
There only are three socialist _links_, even. [*] One is
the Northite woos-woos site; another is "marx2mao.com";
and the third is MIA (which Gelis criticized incoherently after
it suffered massive external attacks blowing up a server).
It looks like a tinfoil blog for conspiracy buffs -- there
are links to "whatdoesitmean.com," "911forum.org.uk,"
"whatreallyhappened.com" and other places that only
MeMeMeberry thinks are vital concerns for the
international working class. I mean, maybe there
is a whole clot of these little KDE guys running around
a village without electricity somewhere, but they
aren't posting to the Net, even if they have leather-bound
copies of the Collected Wisdom of Chairman Gelis.
The guy slurs you as a Stalinist agent; then he asks you,
that Stalinist agent, to post bio data on other socialist militants
you may know.
What would Mr. Diamond say about that?
==
== He CASUALLY does the work of a cop, by casting
== deep aspersions on the basic character and motivation
== of individual socialists, to sow artificial discord.
Of course, our real-world Diamond will not say that about
our sinister conspiracist Gelis. (He wrote it about the dishonest
epigone Holmes. He might even say something similar about
Louis Proyect, if Proyect ever pulled a similar stunt).
- David Stevens
[*] http://www.vngelis.blogspot.com/
I don't mean to disparage blogs in general. I know of
many excellent Blogspot blogs maintained by individuals.
Stephen Diamond has _two_ of them. Neither has any jpg
pictures reflecting the odd combo of liberal popfrontism and
Gelis' scatalogical obsessionism. - DS
stephen
> Stephen Diamond replied to what he thinks I said.
>
>
>
> > > I think Gelis is quite as bad as Holmes, but so much less
> > > sophisticated that readers are unlikely to get sucked in.
>
> > > Gelis, for example, still wants to claim I said the KDE was
> > > not real. I said the KDE tried to join James Paris' MWG
> > > as junior partner, their "bound volumes" are not in evidence,
> > > and their "official" website is a guy's personal blog.
>
> > You don't really think it "just as bad" to lie about a nuance
> > of a trivial claim and to commit serious calumny?
>
> OF COURSE NOT: and I said so explicitly. My "just as bad"
> referred to Holmes' ambush "No comment neccessary" comment,
> which I reproduced in that post.
>
> I made it quite clear that it was a dishonest treatment of Dusty,
> but that it was _not even of the same order_ as the calumnies.
I think you misunderstand my point. You said, or so I thought, that
vngelis's attributions that to you of the view that the KDE doesn't
exist is "just as bad as" Holmes's calumnies against Dusty. Seems you
are comparing something else above.
But that doesn't mean anyone hoped for unification, as opposed to
discussing and debating positions.
srd
David Stevens
>
> > > You don't really think it "just as bad" to lie about a nuance
> > > of a trivial claim and to commit serious calumny?
> >
> > OF COURSE NOT: and I said so explicitly. My "just as bad"
> > referred to Holmes' ambush "No comment neccessary" comment,
> > which I reproduced in that post.
> >
> > I made it quite clear that it was a dishonest treatment of Dusty,
> > but that it was _not even of the same order_ as the calumnies.
>
> I think you misunderstand my point. You said, or so I thought,
> that vngelis's attributions that to you of the view that the KDE
> doesn't exist is "just as bad as" Holmes's calumnies against
> Dusty. Seems you are comparing something else above.
Here's exactly what I said -- immediately prior your challenge:
==
== I purposely chose an example limited in scope. (I do not
== trivialize the slimier charges Holmes said against Dusty,
== political falsehoods of a higher order). I believe this shows
== the operation at a single-cell level, without the customary
== "dead dog" stew.
==
== It's merely a Usenet artifact, not a Robertsonite one:
==
== I think Gelis is quite as bad as Holmes, but so much less
== sophisticated that readers are unlikely to get sucked in.
While seemingly repetitive, this exchange has been instructive
to me. We've already seen ("ambush," above) that Holmes went
to non-trivial lengths to delete context in an ostensible reply.
It was anything but casual, at least in that regard, because it
was a deliberate blurring of Dusty's immigration position.
Many readers may agree when I characterize Gelis as
excessively casual -- even to the point where he can
ignore context altogether in what purports to be a reply.
Is Stephen Diamond's excessive casualness, exhibited here,
more like Gelis or more like Holmes (who was willing to
be awfully casual when he debated, with or of, trolls)?
I think it's more like Gelis, but with reservations.
Diamond is far superior to me as a writer.
It might stand to reason he would also be a better reader.
With regard to "my" audience, I trust it isn't so.
- David Stevens
stephen
So, you think the final paragraph clearly limits the conclusion that
vngelis is "quite as bad as Holmes" to the comparison involving "an
example [of Holmes's dishonesty] limited in scope"? As I read the
post, you first explain why you analyzed Holmes's lesser atrocity
instead of the greater one, and your comment "Gelis is quite as bad as
Holmes" started a new idea, a statement made with full literal
generality. If you wanted the prior matter to serve as context, I
would have thought you would have said "as bad as Holmes in the prior
example," not "Holmes" simpliciter. I accept your statement of what
you _meant_, but I think you actually _believe_ vngelis is "quite as
bad as Holmes" simpliciter, based on your directing equal fire to the
two camps.
srd
srd
Vngelis
>
> Still cant produce a single article, a single argument, a single
> presence in any ostensible labour organisations press.
> 48 hrs aint long enough? You want more time? Take a week. I am sure
> you are busy...
> vngelis
72 hours have elapsed still nothing from ...Stevens.
Only hot air this time not from his ass but his mouth...
vngelis
David Stevens
>
> .. but I think you actually _believe_ vngelis is
I do happen to believe that. But it's a broader topic.
We would have to define principles involved in the
light of other questions, not involving websites or
bound volumes.
I would solicit advice from my more class-conscious
opponents who have always shown respect for the
norms of workers democracy. Like Einde.
I know already how far _your_ principles go:
"No excuse under the light of workers democracy
permits potentially libelous comments, such as by
[SOME GUY I DON'T LIKE], without checking the
record, which can be simply accomplished by a
Google Groups search."
-- Stephen Diamond [21 June 2008]
"Re: Where lies the continuity of Trotskyism?"
> based on your directing equal fire to the two camps.
If you think I directed equal fire into "two camps" --
a dichotomy that seems to recall Holmes' actual views about
blocs or alliances against matters of principle -- you were
maybe the only reader who thought so, after reading
the entire "ambush" post.
I have paid little attention to Gelis for years on end.
Perhaps future years will prove as fruitful.
Since John Holmes is likely to sulk for a while,
I certainly have time to give Gelis any attention
he may deserve. Holmes had the very annoying
habit of interjecting little nits into large questions,
only to prove wrong in all sizes.
How much attention Gelis deserves is a big question,
much larger than the question of Gelis himself. (Even
more enormous than the world-embracing KDE).
- David Stevens
David Stevens
stephen
> Stephen Diamond:
>
>
>
> > .. but I think you actually _believe_ vngelis is
> > "quite as bad as Holmes" simpliciter,
>
> I do happen to believe that. But it's a broader topic.
"Simpliciter" goes to Holmes, not the entire phrase. I didn't think
you were making a global evaluation of who is better or worse but who
was the more politically dishonest. I'm saying you think vngelis
dishonest, as much as Holmes. If that's the case, I cannot understand
why you are making a fuss about being misinterpreted.
>
> We would have to define principles involved in the
> light of other questions, not involving websites or
> bound volumes.
>
> I would solicit advice from my more class-conscious
> opponents who have always shown respect for the
> norms of workers democracy. Like Einde.
>
> I know already how far _your_ principles go:
>
> "No excuse under the light of workers democracy
> permits potentially libelous comments, such as by
> [SOME GUY I DON'T LIKE], without checking the
> record, which can be simply accomplished by a
> Google Groups search."
>
> -- Stephen Diamond [21 June 2008]
> "Re: Where lies the continuity of Trotskyism?"
Do you think I owe some duty to criticize evenhandedly in a forum. As
I see it, my duty is limited to not defending posts I think wrong (for
whatever reason) and not attacking posts I think are correct. I don't
have a duty to attack every post I think is wrong. It's fair to
criticize me for not being more evenhanded in criticism, simply
because the criticism is true. But I don't consider this kind of bias
unprincipled--not in a forum.
srd
>
> > based on your directing equal fire to the two camps.
>
> If you think I directed equal fire into "two camps" --
> a dichotomy that seems to recall Holmes' actual views about
> blocs or alliances against matters of principle -- you were
> maybe the only reader who thought so, after reading
> the entire "ambush" post.
How do you know what other readers thought? I think this is but a
disguised statement of _your_ impressions.
srd
David Stevens
>
> > If you think I directed equal fire into "two camps" --
> > a dichotomy that seems to recall Holmes' actual views about
> > blocs or alliances against matters of principle -- you were
> > maybe the only reader who thought so, after reading
> > the entire "ambush" post.
>
> How do you know what other readers thought?
> I think this is but a disguised statement of _your_ impressions.
It is not disguised. I don't know what people think unless
they tell me (and sometimes not even). It is unusual for me
to hear from offlist readers, and that is typically over some
focused academic question or limited technical matter.
But even if non-posting readers spoke en masse, the claim
that "only" you thought something would have to fail from
my inability to enumerate all possible counterexamples.
I was indeed able, if required, to enumerate all possible
counterexamples in that dead dog case involving the
troll I referred to as sinister and coprophagic. To prove
that he never "admitted" his fascism, that was just what
I had to do. It was a lot of work, even when I had a
head start of a few years.
Had I not qualified my cited statement above, I might
seem as casual as a Gelis. Your attention to details like this
seems to fill a void left by Holmes (and I do not intend that
statement in a "good" way).
- David Stevens "The lurkers support me" -- Usenet traditional
Vngelis
Taking account the cdes who comprise the KDE produced the first ever
paper after the fall of the junta, the 'editor' of MIA who glorifies
cold warriors and gives interviews in the New York Times against China
has some gall to assert with his muppet gay bumchum Stevens that we
have never had a paper, never had a website, never had a blog site ad
nauseum.
Stick to what you do best promoting the nuclear industry for your
bosses and mass immigration for the ruling class.
vngelis
David Stevens
>
> Taking account the cdes who comprise the KDE produced
> the first ever paper after the fall of the junta, the 'editor' of MIA
> who glorifies cold warriors and gives interviews in the New York
Fake Trotsky FAQ! Fake Trotsky FAQ!
(Of course, Malecki never linked his own website to what he
called the Fake Trotsky FAQ, like this "anything-goes" dude).
> with his muppet gay bumchum Stevens that we
That's probably an answer on the bound volumes question!
I did not mean to be ungenerous. Gelis' original claim
was merely:
+ +
++ > All the editions of the KDE are also in bound volumes
++ > and publically available, so what?
Readers can see how I took the misspelling as having intended
"publicly available."
Gelis merely meant: pubic-ally available.
From his obsession with gays, we knew that already.
- David Stevens
nada
He's getting a bit testy isn't he? I really poised it as a question
since no one cares (OK, you do, since you had to ASK!) about "Bound
volumes of the KDE...". That was troll bait for Gelis, which he
gobbled up, including the trebble hook attached. And the sinker.
Actually I never gave an interview to the NY Times, but I would of
gladly done it since my Marxism is better than the person who gave it,
but, then, it was about China tyring to knock us off the internet, all
factual, all proven. Fuck the Chinese gov't when they attack us, or,
their own workers (what is it , up to 14,000 strikes a year now?).
That's my own personal opinion of course. So what IS good, Gelis
wonders, then, about China. Lot's!
For example, despite their deep decent into chasing US dollars and
making chatchcas for the US, they are the BESTEST when it comes to
what Gelis accused me of doing (he LOVE to make charges, doesn't
he. . . >
Walters: So, I'm eating at the Indian place down the street...
Gelis's response: Imperialist! Globalist!)
So, I digress....of course that would be: Nuclear energy...China is
the BIGGEST advocate of nuclear energy in the world and they do a much
better job of it that I could ever do. And, hey got the US DOLLARS to
back it up! 160 plants over the next 35 years. What's not to like.
So...it's me and the Chinese, happily married, forever, around nuclear
energy? Where's Gelis:
Here he is...
Imperialist! Globalist!
thaththathathat's alll folkks!
D.
David Stevens
>
> Actually I never gave an interview to the NY Times,
I knew that you didn't. I _did_ read that thread (and
I read beyond Gelis' proffered search string which, only
included stuff with MeMeVngelis included).
Gelis used a conflation with MIA to slime you at what
amounts to third hand. He sometimes makes it look like
mere typographical sloppiness -- here, a missing comma --
or mere confusion of thought. I am convinced it's just a
part of his _method_ -- but then, who am I to say where
the poor guy's condusion of thought begins or ends?
That thread was interesting too for Diamond's critique
of MIA, which he effectively argued should be constituted
as a Party. Since that is obviously impractical, his suggestion
becomes instead: an all-tendency Omni Party!
I was also amused to see Gelis critique MIA technical
judgement based on what somebody told him at the pub.
You are a globalist, Walters, otherwise you would not
be trying to extend commie propaganda into poor countries
with the imperialist MIA. Just to show how bad it is, I will
link my own website to the MIA, as soon as I get a website.
- David Stevens
David Stevens
>
> If that's the case, I cannot understand
> why you are making a fuss about being misinterpreted.
("Why" is because Diamond did not respect my "magic talisman
against being misunderstood merely because my organization
isn't as good as I think." Not that he knew it existed).
In another thread, I apologized to Stephen Diamond.
I do so here, too.
A couple of his other points here, being substantial,
exceed my short-term lifting capacity. The stuff that
deserves my attention the most always takes longer
than the easy stuff. Or even the jokes.
- David Stevens
David Stevens
>
> For reference, you asked in another post why I considered you a
> Robertsonite. Positions like this one are defining of Robertsonite
> thinking and unique to it.
Do you remember when I was being critiqued on the ostensible
basis of support for the whole Living Marxism line? Perhaps
there was a time I would have liked the RCP's positions (although
clearly it would have been before I started reading LM).
I think you and I have both been nationally focused. Maurice
Brinton was an influence in my youth, and I think Phil Ferguson
was a good influence in my political adulthood. I liked what I saw
in Ferguson's _revolution_ (New Zealand).
> To tie this agreement to another part of the same discussion,
> the NPAC issue brings out the anarchist component
> in Robertsonite positions. Just as Robertsonites abolish the state
> with legalization of drugs and (practically) open borders, they
> abolish private property, in their equation of workers democracy
> with non-exclusionism.
Calling the SL as favoring "(practically) open borders" would
amuse some. The predecessor of Paris' MWG published an
article demanding wage parity on both sides of the US-Mexico
border. That was in their theoretical journal, and it amused
all fifty of us who read it. [a characterization, not a nosecount]
I don't believe you can say I am a Robertsonite on the basis
of borders or your "abolition of private property" -- you
may as well consider me a Randite as an anarchist if we
have moved away from real economics.
On other hand, I recall that Phil Ferguson is a Fraserite.
He does not stick to purely national ground any more than
I do, and he is a revolutionary integrationist with respect to
the position of Maori in Enzedd society.
I hereby declare myself a Fergusonite until such time as
Ferguson himself may reappear and strips me of that title.
Then I shall go back to being a syndicalist Neo-Fraserite.
- David Stevens
scottp...@gmail.com
Stevens?" . . . .
Well . . . he is The Nematode
David Stevens
>
> Sorry, but just to get back to the original question "Who Is Dave
> Stevens?" . . . .
>
>
> Well . . . he is The Nematode
Scott Solomon is the proud _inventor_ of that example of
what the Bolsheviks used to call "zoological dehumanization."
I'm not sure about how it compares to a gay muppet boojum.
Stalin's prosecutor, Vyshinsky, was more fluent than poor
Scottie. He offered "carrion", "lice", the well-known
"hybrids of fox and pig," and my own personal favorite,
"pug dogs and puppies attempting to mount an elephant."
Solomon offers it as characterization of my brainlessness.
You see, I was not smart enough to clip out the coupon
in my _Bulletin_ and check those little boxes that said,
[ ] Please send me information about socialism
[ ] Yes, I want to join the Workers League.
so Scott, who was exactly that smart, likes to remind me.
- David Stevens
stephen
> Stephen Diamond:
>
>
>
> > For reference, you asked in another post why I considered you a
> > Robertsonite. Positions like this one are defining ofRobertsonite
> > thinking and unique to it.
>
> Do you remember when I was being critiqued on the ostensible
> basis of support for the whole Living Marxism line? Perhaps
> there was a time I would have liked the RCP's positions (although
> clearly it would have been before I started reading LM).
>
> I think you and I have both been nationally focused. Maurice
> Brinton was an influence in my youth, and I think Phil Ferguson
> was a good influence in my political adulthood. I liked what I saw
> in Ferguson's _revolution_ (New Zealand).
>
> > To tie this agreement to another part of the same discussion,
> > the NPAC issue brings out theanarchistcomponent
> > with legalization of drugs and (practically) open borders, they
> > abolish private property, in their equation of workers democracy
> > with non-exclusionism.
>
> Calling the SL as favoring "(practically) open borders" would
> amuse some. The predecessor of Paris' MWG published an
> article demanding wage parity on both sides of the US-Mexico
> border. That was in their theoretical journal, and it amused
> all fifty of us who read it. [a characterization, not a nosecount]
I don't think even the Cliffites make that demand. WV took an
unpopular hypothetical position on Belgium a few years ago. The strong
open borderists didn't like it, and the Sparts have played it down.
Using Holmes as meter, the Sparts in practice come down on everything
of practical significance on the side of the open borderists. (We have
differing intutions about whether Holmes is a fair measure.) The
Sparts claim they don't advocate open borders, but in fact, they would
make borders impossible to enforce, since on the Spart standard,
anyone who gets across the line should be defended against
deportation, and the Sparts also oppose measures like the Wall.
>
> I don't believe you can say I am aRobertsoniteon the basis
> of borders or your "abolition of private property" -- you
> may as well consider me a Randite as ananarchistif we
> have moved away from real economics.
Certain key very specific positions allow determining broad tendency
membership better than abstract criteria. The NPAC skirmish does a
good job of identifying Robertsonites. Healyites? Security and the 4th
International. Even Scott Solomon believes there's some truth there.
Even I think the centrists and revisionists of the world were wrong to
form a moralistic bloc against Healy, and regardless of Healy's
motives, he was right to ask that the case of Trotsky's assassination
be reopened. Every SWP U.S. type Pabloite, from Louis Proyect
(shading to Stalinism) to David Walters thinks the single issue anti-
war movement was the right line and a great achievement. Political
traditions, like scientific theories, often depend more on
paradigmatic example than formal theories.
srd
David Stevens
>
> Political traditions, like scientific theories, often depend
> more on paradigmatic example than formal theories.
What about the Marcyites? To me, most of them are hard
to distinguish from our SWP/US crew, but they have some
different touchstones.
And AdamSF managed to convince me that the Marcy
view of 1956 Hungary, that horrible black beast of nearly
all non-Marcy Trots, is possibly correct. But he disagrees
a lot with the other (two?) kinds of Marcyites, and I disagree
on a lot with him.
I have been thinking about my more LMish positions. I am
not in their camp on commercial speech, but I am closer to it
than I am to Proyect's arguments against it. It does not take me
much to see an opening wedge against the First Amendment in
many arguments from the loosey goosey left.
And I recently read a debate between rent@mob and Vngelis
(to one side) and Proyect (to another).
It made me feel at home. Gelis Spart-baited rent@mob, then
have a figure of $400 trillion (he meant $500 billion) and confused
US debt with current deficit. Proyect baited Comrade Mob on
fox-hunting (a standard anti-LM bait) after Mob pointed to an
article by Mick Hume.
I found myself agreeing with Mob (and Hume, who has annoyed
me sometimes). But when Mob was Spart-baited, he asked Gelis
whether the Sparts were a gay tourist outfit. So I guess I've read
more WVs than Comrade Mob did.
LM exposed the European Convention on Human Rights for
what it was, from a class perspective. Proyect hailed it.
- David Stevens
David Stevens
> ..
> Certain key very specific positions allow determining broad tendency
> membership better than abstract criteria. The NPAC skirmish does a
> good job of identifying Robertsonites. Healyites? Security and the 4th
> International. Even Scott Solomon believes there's some truth there.
> Even I think the centrists and revisionists of the world were wrong to
> form a moralistic bloc against Healy, and regardless of Healy's
> motives, he was right to ask that the case of Trotsky's assassination
> be reopened. Every SWP U.S. type Pabloite, from Louis Proyect
> (shading to Stalinism) to David Walters thinks the single issue anti-
> war movement was the right line and a great achievement. Political
> traditions, like scientific theories, often depend more on
> paradigmatic example than formal theories.
I do not believe that all Pabloites are the same. I even question the use
of the term for elucidation. (It's sort of like saying that the stalinists
and
the social democrats are VERY different from each other, which is
not really the case anymore).
Anyway, let's look at NPAC. What was its structure? Was the PL call
for a vote justified by charter or constitution? Was I correct to assert
that SWP controlled its apparatus? Louis Proyect, whom I shall call
as a witness, wrote that SL was not a member of NPAC. Was WL?
I don't think it was possible for an _individual_ to be a member of NPAC,
but I never got an answer from anybody on that.
When we debated this in 1997, Diamond made substantially the same
point he makes now. (Consistency is a virtue):
-> Did NPAC promise a democratic meeting? If so, in what terms? Or, is
-> disruption justified merely because a meeting fails some abstract test of
-> democracy? Personally, I think severe breaches of democracy, such as is
-> described by Abbot, might well warrant disruption, but only if the
-> participants relied on _specifically formulated_ promises of democracy.
No
-> tendency or front has a duty to make its internal functioning accord with
-> democratic norms, or to define democracy itself consensually.
->
-> To claim otherwise, as I think Spartacist did sets a dangerous
precedent,
-> where each tendency decides for itself whether a meeting is democratic,
-> and wages war at its own discretion.
My tentative conclusion -- "Sadly, that seems to be what we have" -- was
enough for Stephen to consider me a Robertsonite for lo these many years.
(Perhaps that shows the power of paradigmatic example in a way other than
what Stephen intended: the Workers League took part in this dust-up on
the side of political revisionism. So it is a touchstone for him, and
anything
short of the whole hog Proyect-Wohlforth view is a kind of Robertsonism).
I append the published account from eyewitness Paul Abbot, referenced
above by Diamond.
- David Stevens
--------------------------------------------
I attended the National Peace Action Coalition
(NPAC) at Hunter College on the 4 July 1971
weekend. At that time I was a member of the
Socialist Workers Party and had previously been
a member of the Southern Regional Executive
Committee of the Young Socialist Alliance.
I was also a "marshal" at the conference.
Every group has the right to develop a defense
guard to prevent its meetings from being disrupted,
but the NPAC "marshals" did not form such a group.
They were virtually entirely selected on the basis
of their support for the SWP, and those individuals
hostile to the SWP's politics were consciously
excluded as I was told at the time by an SWP leader.
Thus they would not be present to insure that
democratic procedures would be followed, but
rather to insure that the SWP's policies were
adopted, even if this meant that they themselves
would be the disruptive force.
The SWP has decided before the meeting that US
Senator Vance Hartke would speak along with Victor
Reuther, a leader of the UAW. When the Spartacist
League challenged the SWP's agenda, called for the
removal of Hartke and called for discussion and vote
on its motion, the chairman (an SWP member) ruled
the motion out of order on the grounds that "the
meeting had not yet started." Thus from the very
beginning, the SWP, not the SL or the Progressive
Labor Party, disrupted the democratic functioning
of the meeting.
Denied this right by the SWP, both the PL and the
SL proceeded to heckle Hatke and in general, keep him
from speaking. While PL additionally attempted to
shout Reuther down, the SL chanted "Labor Strikes
Against the War" about three times and then sat down.
As the PL chanting began to wane, SWP head marshal
Fred Halstead suddenly led a select group of SWP
marshals against the PL, an activity which brought
the other SWP-selected marshals into the attack
as well. The SL leader at the conference clearly
stated that the SL was leaving of its own accord.
Despite this, marshals attacked the SL as well,
resulting in several injuries to the SL members
present. I repeat, the SWP itself was the group
that disrupted the meeting by ruling out of order
any call for discussion and vote on its previously
selected agenda, and SWP leader Fred Halstead, not
PL or the SL, began the physical attack.
- Paul Abbot
David Stevens
bullhorns (or whistles, etc.) is an antielucidatory practice.
Technically, the PL was not "Maoist," but it was hard to tell.
(I have incorrectly decsribed them as Maoist, too).
- David Stevens
--------------------
+ David, this is really a very simple matter. PL/SDS had been violently
+ attacking meetings and rallies of the antiwar movement in Boston for
+ months leading up to the NPAC meeting in NYC, which was another PL/SDS
+ stronghold. They came to the meeting in a phalanx and as soon as people
+ began to speak from the front of the room, they tried to shout them down.
+ The disruption got even worse when Hartke began to speak. The PL/SDS
+ leaders began using bullhorns. This was the long and short of it.
+ Unless they were thrown out, the meeting could not have continued.
+
+ The role of the Spartacist League was to assist the PL/SDSers. What both
+ groups had in common was the belief that NPAC was part of the warmongering
+ establishment. They believed that bourgeois politicians like Vance Hartke
+ should not be permitted to speak on the platforms of the antiwar movement
+ and PL/SDS used violence to try to enforce their beliefs.
+
+ What both camps had in common was "third period" ultraleftism. The
Maoists
+ and the Spartacist League were so sectarian that they could not understand
+ that the mass demonstrations calling for immediate withdrawal from Vietnam
+ were objectively anti-imperialist. The ultraleft slogans that the Maoists
+ and the Spartacist League favored were incapable of mobilizing people.
+ They were subjectively anti-imperialist but slogans are useless unless
+ they can mobilize people. That is what the Transitional Program is
+ supposed to be about, I believe.
David Stevens
which is of natural interest to me. So I offer instead a dose of
Fraser (Kirk) from APST's Philip Ferguson, [20 Aug 1997].
- David Stevens, Neo-Fraserite
---
I've followed the arguments over SWP policy in NPAC with some interest.
Unfortunately they have got bogged down in who did what to who at this
or that conference and amidst the argumentation over disruption and
punch-ups, the political questions have got somewhat lost.
So I'd like to throw in some political stuff from Richard Fraser, both
on the federal troops to Little Rock issue and on the anti-Vietnam War
movement.
I don't have much time, so this is just cobbled together pretty roughly.
On October 10, 1957 Fraser wrote to the SWP political committee
protesting the call in the "Militant" for federal troops to Little Rock.
All emphases are in the original.
Fraser noted that the question of federal troops in Little Rock "has
posed the fundamental question point-blank: shall the struggle in the
South be waged in abject dependence upon the government, or
independently by the masses?"
He continues:
"The entire Negro community of Little Rock, numbering 25,000 was
poised and ready for action. Their eagerness to participate in the
struggle at times OVERFLOWED IN DRAMATIC ERUPTIONS, AS
TESTIFIED TO BY THE NEGRO PRESS. Moreover, this mass
eagerness occurred within a favorable relationship of forces.
"The Negro middle class leaders refused the masses any part in the
struggle, demanding that they cease aspiring to act and to accept a
passive role meekly. Having betrayed the masses' desire for action, the
leadership appealed instead to the government to solve the crisis.
"The demand for Federal troops to the South is revealed in action,
not as an adjunct to but as a substitute for the organized action of the
masses and is counterposed directly to it."
He goes on to show how the SWP political committee position simply
tailed behind the middle class leaders and served to impede
self-organization of the Black masses in the South and of broader
working class support. The demand for federal troops raised by the SWP
central leadership, he notes, "provides a political justification for
continued dependence on the government and for perpetuation of the
policy of NO ORGANIZATION OF THE MASSES."
Fraser persistently criticised the way the SWP central leadership tailed
after everything that moved in the Black community - except, of course,
for the Black masses themselves. First the SWP tailed the middle class
Christian religious leaders and their reliance on the institutions of
the state, then they tailed Elijah Muhammed and the Nation of Islam in a
grotesque way in the early 1960s. When Malcolm X broke with the NOI,
the SWP leadership had to substantially readjust their position. When
the NOI murdered Malcolm, the fact that the SWP leaders had so
chronically politically tail-ended Elijah Muhammed put them in the
bizarre position of refusing to acknowledge what everyone knew - that
Muhammed had had Malcolm executed.
The SWP's tailending of Black nationalist separatism completely
incapacitated the party in intervening in the Black community. They had
nothing at all distinctive to say as Marxists. They just tagged along
behind whatever the Black community had 'self-determined' - ie whatever
any group of middle class Black leaders had determined.
Fraser's views on the SWP approach to the anti-Vietnam War movement is
also interesting. Fraser was a veteran working class militant and one
of that rare breed, the genuine worker-intellectual; he joined the
American Trotskyist movement in the mid-1930s when he was about 21 or
22, was a founder-member of the SWP in 1938, and a party organiser and
member of the national committee for about 20-25 years before finally
resigning in disgust, in early 1966, over the SWP's degeneration into
radical labourism/reformism. Fraser cannot therefore be dismissed as
some ultraleft petty-bourgeois critic of SWP "proletarian" strategy.
Fraser saw very clearly what was wrong with the leadership's approach
and the way they held back the antiwar movement and retarded the
political development of a whole generation of activists.
Of the 1965 Thanksgiving Weekend antiwar conference in Washington,
Fraser noted in a December 13, 1965 letter to the PC:
"Here the party and youth carried on an unprincipled, disruptive and
politically reformist struggle against the entire left wing of the
antiwar movement. They disrupted the conference around tertiary
organizational demands and ended in isolation and national disgrace.
They established an indelible and deserved record for political
conservatism and dead-end factionalism. They also emerged as the only
tendency present able to ignore and snub the civil rights movement.
"This episode constitues a political catastrophe for the SWP of a
magnitude never before experienced by American trotskyism. If immediate
steps are not take to counteract the effect of this performance, the
reaction to it will render the party and youth as contemptible among
honest militants as was the CP during its worst days. . ."
Fraser argued rightly that the single-issue campaign and legalistic
fetish of the SWP's increasingly conservative leadership was taking them
into a popular frontist peace-politics approach that was little
different from that followed by the CP and pacifists in the 1930s. It
was separating the issue of the war from capitalism. It was, of course,
precisely this non-Marxist separation that allowed bourgeois politicians
to endorse NPAC. The SWP basically became peace campaigners rather than
Marxist revolutionaries.
As opposed to the social patriotic "Bring the Boys Home" slogan, Fraser
argues, "In reality, a more tangible and quicker possibility for the
withdrawal of US armed forces from Vietnam could be accomplished if the
National Liberation Front can drive them into the China Sea. This is
the active revolutionary solution to the question. But there is no hint
of recognition in our literature that this is the most favorable
alternative.
"The party and the youth leave it to others who are bolder to be
partisans of the NLF, others who may lack something in program, theory
or experience, but make up for it in the revolutionary spirit of
solidarity so dismally absent from the pages of the 'Militant'."
Moreover while thousands and thousands of militant young activists were
coming to the realisation that more than peace protests were necessary
to fight the war, the SWP and YSA intervened as a rightist faction to
restrain the movement from being anything other than a peace movement.
Fraser argued:
"The Washington Conference represented objectively an attempt by
newly radicalized youth to begin reaching general anti-capitalist
conclusions derived from the past two years of protest. Even the newest
CEWVs (Committees to End the War in Vietnam) are ripe for revolutionary
conclusions. The rapid leftward development of large sections of this
movement clearly opened up the perspective for the creation of a mass
revolutionary youth movement in this country.
"The main and only responsibnility of the revolutionary socialists at
this conference was to attempt to broaden and deepen and generalize the
anti-capitalist tendencies - to raise the political level of the
movement."
As he points out, the SWP actually repelled most of those in the
movement coming to anti-capitalist conclusions. It was left to the
Sparts, the left factions of SDS, PL and so on to attract these layers.
"Our youth movement," says Fraser, "resisted and disrupted the attempts
to draw general radical, socialistic conclusions, and became in fact the
right wing of the conference, in objective programmatic alliance with
the established peace addicts on the 'Peace Only' issue. . ."
He described the YSA as "an essentially conservative organization"
which, lacking "the ideological and political equipment" to cope with
the sizeable left forces emerging out of the radicalization around the
war, especially the left of SDS, viewed it "with alarm and hostility".
In effect, the SWP-YSA approach drove hundreds and hundreds of militant
young activists into Maoism, because Maoism appeared revolutionary in
contrast to the plodding reformism of the SWP-YSA leadership.
Fraser also pointed to the effect their conservative line in the antiwar
movement of 1965 would have on the future development of the SWP-YSA:
"What is revealed is a rapid movement towards reformism by the youth
leadership. The youth movement is an essentially petty-bourgeois
formation without serious connection with the working class either
theoretically through Marxism or directly through contact and
organization. It has now broken out of its precarious condition of
isolation and insulation from the mass movements of its time, and come
into contact with the essentially middle class antiwar movement. Its
conservatism on the draft question, its reluctance to become the
champions of the NLF, its refusal to face programmatic questions all
demonstrate an affinity with the more conservative layers of the peace
movement.
"Sensitivity to the conservative elements of a middle class movement
has apparently impelled the youth group itself in a rightward direction
with great speed, at the very time that the major sectors of the
(antiwar) movement are moving rapidly leftward.
"Inasmuch as the youth represents the principal base of the party,
the velocity of this petty-bourgeois, essentially reformist, current
tends to sweep the party along with it."
Fraser also notes that the policies followed by the SWP-YSA leadership
in 1965 "were the subject neither of SWP convention debates nor
documents. . . Furthermore, the peace movement policy has not been
recorded in any comprehensive form in any PC minutes. The source of
policy in this matter is not precisely clear."
Barnes' dumping of permanent revoilution in the early 1980s was not a
new departure. The SWP leadership core had been making reformist policy
in its own cabal for decades. In the early 1960s, potential
revolutionary opponents (the RT, the Fraser group) etc were basically
deprived of their democratic rights and forced out of the party. The
Weisses and people associated with them, described by Fraser as an
essentially revolutionary group, had already been harassed and crapped
on for a decade and had finally left.
The Breitmans and Lovells and Milt Alvins and Asher Harers and all the
rest of the older cadre bureaucratically purged by the Barnes clique in
the 1980s, went along with all this crap in the early 1960s.
In the library here at Canterbury University (Christchurch, New Zealand)
there is a wee pamphlet by Cannon called "Don't Strangle the Party". It
was actually put together by Breitman in the 1980s and shows that Cannon
was not happy about the organizational practices followed by Dobbs-Kerry
and co in the early 1960s and the treatment of opponents of the party
political committee. Unfortunately, Cannon was in his mid-70s by this
stage and played no part in the leadership, but he warned that the
increasingly tight organizational practices being pursued were in danger
of strangling the party.
Of course, Breitman putting this stuff together in the mid-1980s is
completely hypocritical: back in the 1960s when all this stuff was being
done, he was one of the perpetrators of the vicious suppression of
minority viewpoints. Indeed his own mediocre ramblings on black
nationalism depended for any credence on the suppression of Fraser's
opposing views on black nationalism and revolutionary integration.
Fraser's position and analysis is light years ahead of Breitman's, but
Breitman was part of the machine, so Fraser's Marxist approach never had
a chance.
Also particularly interesting is the Fraser-Kaye 1965 document (Fraser
writing under the name Kirk) on "Radical Laborism versus Bolshevik
Leadership" (SWP Discussion Bulletin vol 25, no. 14, 1965), which
analyses the Dobbs-Kerry leadership during the 1950s and early 1960s,
and Fraser's "A Letter to American Trotskyists: too little, too late"
which appeared in the journal "Revolutionary Age" (vol 3, no. 4,
1974/5).
One of the main effects of the SWP's reformism in the antiwar movement
was that it totally cut off the SWP from maintaining let alone improving
upon its position as the main radical left force outside the CP. In the
1930s, the Trotskyists around Cannon had fused with leftward-mving
groups like the WP and the left faction of the SP. Even in the late
1950s, during the Cold War, the SWP had carried out a regroupment on the
far left.
In the 1960s and 1970s, however, the SWP completely repelled the bulk of
leftward-moving forces and the result was the emergence of a large
Maoist milieu and also the rise (or semi-rise) of Trotskyist opponents.
Today, groups like the Workers World Party are probably more influential
than the SWP. I note the WWP candidate for president got a lot more
votes than the SWP ticket for instance. Now that Barnes has drawn out
the reformist and bureaucratic logic to its final mad-cult denoument,
the SWP has effectively been killed off altogether. All that's left is
a few hundred Forest Gumps following orders from Wacko Jacko.
A similar scenario happened in NZ, as the NZ section of the FI was an
SWP-loyalist group (Socialist Action League, the sad equally Gump-like
remnant of which now calls itself the Communist League). It
rote-learned the SWP antiwar strategy and as a result split the
anti-Vietnam War movement in Wellington, even leading to the holding of
two separate antiwar marches the same night in the city, repelling most
of the left activists and driving them into the arms of a tiny
Mao-Stalinist group which, as a result, grew enormously and went on to
dominate Wellington left politics for the following 15-20 years. The
SAL never regained the ground it lost in Wellington and there isn't even
a CL branch in the capital any more.
What is also interesting about the popular frontist line followed by the
SWP during the anti-Vietnam War movement is that most of the SWP's
1960s and 1970s critics have actually these days completely embraced
the single-issue non-exclusion campaign notion. A good recent example
in NZ is from the protests against French testing at Moruroa in 1995.
For instance, in Wellington the IBT successfully moved a motion in the
main anti-testing group (NON!) that it be a single-issue campaign based
solely around the demand "Stop the Tests!" Anyone who supported that
could join. Well, the entire NZ ruling class was opposed to French
nuclear testing at Moruroa, because NZ capital has its own interests in
the Pacific. Limiting testing groups to that demand - a demand
supported by the whole ruling class here - was therefore popular
frontist. No member of the ruling class could have been excluded after
the IBT got their popular frontist motion passed in NON! The result was
that the IBT helped organise a NON! march with people carrying banners
saying "French Scum!" and "Fuck the French!" (needless to say these
banners did not appear in the coverage in "1917"!)
In fact the approach by most of the left (and the IBT was certainly no
worse than the SWO, Workers Power and others) was to limit anti-tests
activists to a demand raised by the NZ ruling class itself. During the
anti-test protests the popularity of the Tory government rose 6 points
in the opinion polls and Tory PM Jim Bolger rose to become the most
popular politician in the country. Bolger went off to Europe to debate
some french govedrnment official and play anti-test/anti-nuclear
statesman on the world stage. Once again, the 'left' proved completely
incapable of drawing a class line. All the left's campaigning did was
increase the popularity of the Tory government.
So when attacking the SWP's popular frontism over Vietnam, we need to
take into account that this approach has long since been embraced by
most of the SWP's own left critics.
Philip Ferguson
David Stevens
---------------------------------------------
Stephen R. Diamond said
> > "Leading SWP members operating in NPAC verbally and marshals under
their control physically tried to suppress internationalist slogans
supporting for the revolutionaries in Vietnam." Can I ask whether you
actually witnessed this, or is it second hand? It has considerable
importance, becaues it should seal the issue of whether NPAC was a pop front
for everyone
hmmmm. Well, the documentation that SWP was a popular front based on its
relationship with Vance Hartke (Senator), John Lindsay (then republican
Mayor of New York) and others -- should/could hardly be based on *my*
recollections.
But still, for what it's worth:
In spring 1968 there was a huge conflict within the New York antiwar
movement. The supporters of the NLF were denied any right to speak. And both
of the major coalitions (centered around SWP and the CP/pacifists) were
focused on getting ties to the leading politicians who were moving in an
anti-war direction. (This, by the way was the period when the SWP took over
SMC and jettisoned any pro-NLF and antiimperialist politics that had
previously played a big role in it).
In any case: the forces of the city's anti-imperialist coalition (Coalition
for an anti-imperialist movement -- COAIM) organized under the banners
"Victory to the vietnamese, the streets belong to the people, Stop the War
on Black America." This was the time when the uprisings were happening in
the U.S. cities (around the assassination of King.) Many different forces
were involved in this COAIM -- including YAWF, WWP and U.S. committee to aid
the NLF) -- and the thousands that gathered under that politically unity
literally had to fight their way (thru and around mass mobilizations of
cops) from Washington Square Park to Central park -- carrying red and NLF
flags -- where the major rally was held. Once there it was still not
over --the many hundreds of anti-imperialists who arrived literally had to
fight the SWP marshals. I have talked to a former SWPer who was on the
security detail at the podium and fought to prevent these politics from
being expressed there. I have known several people who were on the COAIM
side of the experience. I think there were two kinds of fighting: people
were asked to take down their NLF flags (this may or may not have been
official NPAC/SWP policy) and they were strictly forbidden to have a speaker
on the podium express solidarity with the NLF (this was NPAC/SWP policy).
It is worth pointing out the Lindsay went on (after the Panthers were formed
in the summer of 1968) to help orchestrate the incredible frameup of the
Panther 21 in april 68-- and to my understanding the SWP still insisted he
should have a prominent billing in mass rallies.
Of course, this information may be onesided -- there *may* have been places
and times when NPAC allowed solidarity with the Vietnamese/NLF be expressed
from the podium of their rallies. But I have never heard of it. And would be
curious if anyone has any evidence that this was not a uniform (and rather
conservative) policy.
Certainly SWP figures argued often and hard against the expression of
"Victory to the NLF" *within* the larger unity of "Out Now!" Any conference
or planning meeting.... One point, by the way, is worth reiterating -- The
SWP always tried to imply that folks wanted to *replace* the concept of "Out
Now" with a narrower anti-imperialist slogan. To suggest that the
anti-imperialists did not want unity with broader forces -- but there is no
evidence of that (cuz it ain't true.)
The forces raising "Victory to the NLF" were not opposed to the slogan "Out
Now" (how could they be?) -- but were raising a much needed and very
controversial slogan designed to raise political consciousness,
internationalism and revolutionary isses/sentiments of defeatism in a new
generation (in an america just starting to shake off the almost pychotic
anti-communism of the 1950s). The slogan "VTTNLF" (for example) was raised
*within* the larger Pentagon action of fall 1967, and consistently so in
each successive mass mobilizaiton.
The anti-imperialist forces *were* however strongly against the social
chauvinism of "Bring our boys home." (Tho obviously not to the
silly/sectarian/Spart degree of refusing to march in a mobilization that
contained it!) The rightwing raised "Support our Boys in Vientam" -- to
which the more liberal, reformist forces answered "Support our boys in
vientam, bring them home alive." The USCANLF has a popular (and then very
outrageous and thought-provoking) button that said: "Support our boys in
Vietnam -- Victory to the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam."
nada
is there between being a "Pabloite" and supporting single-issue united
fronts? In fact, the very Pabloite IMT majority of the USFI was for
multi-issues where as the formally anti-Pabloite SWP was against them.
I often find many of the ultra-Trots more inline with Pablo's politics
than those that oppose the same. Just a thought.
David
stephen
The argument above isn't really against single-issue united fronts. It
goes rather to the same criticism you have made, though none too
forcefully, of the SWP in that period: it didn't, through its own
propaganda, introduce a socialist perspective into the anti-war
movement or even (more my point) countenance a consciously anti-
imperialist perspective. We even see testimony above of how the SWP
suppressed efforts to assert any anti-imperialist themes at
demonstrations. This is all, broadly speaking, Pabloite, because it
under-values the subjective factor and effectively substitutes a
"blunted instrument," the single-issue anti-war movement, for the
party, by eliminating anything distinctive the party might say.
srd
stephen
> Denied this right by the SWP, both the PL and the
> SL proceeded to heckle Hatke and in general, keep him
> from speaking. While PL additionally attempted to
> shout Reuther down, the SL chanted "Labor Strikes
> Against the War" about three times and then sat down.
> - Paul Abbot
Here is something I hadn't noticed before. Although the SL didn't try
to prevent Reuther from speaking, it rose with PL symbolically. The SL
did nothing to express principled opposition to the PL disruption of
Reuther, and PL's objectively reactionary disruption at that point
became the main *political* issue before the body.
srd
David Stevens
>
> Here is something I hadn't noticed before. Although the SL didn't
> try to prevent Reuther from speaking, it rose with PL symbolically.
> The SL did nothing to express principled opposition to the PL
> disruption of Reuther, and PL's objectively reactionary disruption
> at that point became the main *political* issue before the body.
I am still looking into what that "body" was. It also appears that
our SL (cited by everybody including SL sources) were members
of what later became the Spartacus Youth -- they were part of
the SDS. Joseph Seymour was reported hospitalized.
David Walters corrected me on a related point. He mentioned
an SDS contingent from the old DeLeonist SLP. I said, "No way."
Comrade Walters responded, "Way," and gave details.
I imagine that the individuals in question did not remain in the
SLP for the entire era. ;-)
- David Stevens
stephen
> Stephen Diamond:
>
>
>
> > Here is something I hadn't noticed before. Although the SL didn't
> > try to prevent Reuther from speaking, it rose with PL symbolically.
> > The SL did nothing to express principled opposition to the PL
> > disruption of Reuther, and PL's objectively reactionary disruption
> > at that point became the main *political* issue before the body.
>
> I am still looking into what that "body" was. It also appears that
> our SL (cited by everybody including SL sources) were members
> of what later became the Spartacus Youth -- they were part of
> the SDS. Joseph Seymour was reported hospitalized.
They had joined PL's worker-student alliance caucus in SDS.
From reports I heard, the marshalls used unnecessary force. I do not,
however, think the marshalls had any duty (I'm not speaking under
bourgeois law) to accept the SL's offer to leave voluntarily. The
disrupter had committed an act of war, and no one was obligated to
take them at their word.
srd
stephen
revisionist. This presumes that the ICL was the supportable side in
the skirmish, because otherwise, the SL too would be revisionist, on
workers democracy.
Also proving Robertsonism, you characterize acts of hooliganism as
being alien to the SL political culture. In this, you presume that the
NPAC skirmish was not an act fitting exactly this description.
srd
On Sep 21, 10:25 am, "David Stevens" <passchenda...@ymail.com> wrote:
stephen
doing what the SL tried to do would be exactly correct. If the SWP
position represented a convention minority and the SL would win a vote
to suppress Hartke, deprived of that vote, the SL might rightly not
only suppress Hartke but take over the conference. The actual exercise
of democratic power trumps formal rights. But the tendencies that came
to NPAC to feed off the SWP's work, present only because the SWP let
them in the door, are in no position to exercise rights within that
framework.
srd
David Stevens
>
> .. (I'm not speaking under bourgeois law)
Bourgeois law probably would have imposed a higher
standard on the marshals to avoid violence against
people who were departing. You seem to think, from
another thread, that I alibi the Sparts. All I say is that
it isn't as simple as _you_ sometimes represent:
++
++ LONG LIVE THE WORKERS LEAGUE DEFENSE AGAINST THE SL AND PLP GOONS!
++
++ HOORAY FOR THAT DAY IN WHICH THE SPARTS GOT THEIR ASSES KICKED--THROWN
++ DOWN FLIGHTS OF STEPS AS WAS THEIR DUE!!!
++
++
++ Too bad ALL of these neofascists didn't get their necks broken.
-- Stephen Diamond, APST [23 March 2000]
"More Defense of Spart Goons--Run the Sparts out of the Workers movement"
After USec's Ernie Tate was beaten by Healyite goons
[17 Nov 1966], the SLL sued him in the bosses' courts.
But the law they relied upon predates the prequisites of
our modern industrial bourgeoisie:
"Mr. Healy, in fact, asked a steward to clear the pavement
in front of the entrance to the Hall in order to allow passengers
alighting from coaches to enter the Hall without being
obstructed."
-- from pleading of SLL lawsuit against Ernie Tate
I insist that readers not mistake my citation for a USec alibi.
- David Stevens
footnote:
Ernie Tate himself was last seen in APST through a posting by
Louis Proyect, "What Happened in Russia, by Ernie Tate,"
[14 Dec 2000] Message-ID: <h0ei3t8qvvre0jufi...@4ax.com>
where Proyect offered the following:
=
= [Ernie Tate was a leader of the British Trotskyist movement in the
= 1960s, where he helped to build the Vietnam antiwar movement, and
= where he recruited Tariq Ali among many other radicalizing students
= and youth. He now lives in Canada where he is employed as a skilled
= worker. If I get a hold of Shepherd's piece, I will pass it along as
= well. Shepherd was a leader of the American Trotskyist movement who
= was purged in the early 1980s.]
David Stevens
>
> But the tendencies that came
> to NPAC to feed off the SWP's work, present only because the SWP let
> them in the door, are in no position to exercise rights within that
> framework.
Proyect was never so sectarian as to say _that_. (His objection
mentioned stuff like bullhorns). That sounds more like what the
ISO might have said, a few years ago -- and they were at least
speaking of their own _private_ "public meetings."
Did SDS have a right to be present? I took as much for granted.
For that matter, what was the WL doing there? Not once, over
the many years of this discussion, has any Wohlforthite ventured
to say how they acquired their membership in NPAC. It doesn't
seem to have been through SDS. Was it programmatic agreement
"at the top" with what Bulletin called "revisionists"?
- David Stevens
David Stevens
>
> What shows Robertsonism is that you characterize the WL/SWP
> side as revisionist. This presumes that the ICL was the supportable
> side in the skirmish, because otherwise, the SL too would be
> revisionist, on workers democracy.
Yes, I surely need to learn workers democracy at _your_ hands.
Perhaps I will, in part.
But not by you explicitly inserting a presumption into my mouth. The
SWP and WL were certainly revisionist in a State & Revolution sort
of war, and the SL may have been revisionist in a more Left Wing
Communism (Infantile) way.
I accept evidence -- even analysis -- from all.
> Also proving Robertsonism, you characterize acts of hooliganism
> as being alien to the SL political culture.
No. I characterized violence as alien to the SL political culture
as I, a mild-mannered former DeLeonist, encountered it.
> In this, you presume that
> the NPAC skirmish was not an act fitting exactly this description.
I do not presume that my own subjective impressions would be
the same as a Healyite thug calling to read his fellow revisionists
out of the workers movement.
That would impair my objective understanding of what happened
before my political coming of age.
- David Stevens
stephen
srd
David Stevens
>
> Anything in all caps is merely "speaking politically."
Ah, thanks. I fear that Holmes has given DeLeonism a bad name.
When I was an IWW, two of us went to intervene at a study class
held by a prominent SLP/US leader in our local public library.
We did our reading, and went to class .. and not only were we
the only students who had done our homework, we were the
most active people there except for the group leader and the
bum who came in out of the rain but wanted to sleep. It was
very sad. All we could do at the end of the day was take our
polite leave and promise not to return.
- David Stevensfu
stephen
> Stephen Diamond:
>
>
>
> > But the tendencies that came
> > to NPAC to feed off the SWP's work, present only because the SWP let
> > them in the door, are in no position to exercise rights within that
> > framework.
>
> Proyect was never so sectarian as to say _that_.
Listening to Proyect, one concludes he would support them, were it not
for the fact that their politics were wrong. I saw nothing to suggest
he regarded their acts as unprincipled. As to the ISO, I would expect
them to argue not only that the SL had no space within which to defend
its putative rights (as opposed to propagandizing from the outside
about their violation), but also that this implied that the SL lacked
any wrongdoings against which it might propagandize.
I suspect almost everyone on the far left would take my (strong)
position against the SL. (This goes to the position's weight re
Robertsonism.) Any "contractual" right that SDS had is trumped in the
immediate circumstances by NPAC's actual possession of the premises.
(The analogy to bourgeois law is for understanding, not automatic
validity when applied.)
This "understanding" of workers democracy is one the SL has long held.
In Madison Wisconsin circe 1970, I held a publicly advertised Workers
League class. A couple of Sparts came from Detroit (I think it was) to
intervene. I wouldn't think of excluding them. (Not after their long
trip. What, am I supposed to be as inhospitable as Paris?) But I could
tell they expect an exclusion attempt; they were surprised at their
immediate admission. It was fairly clear that they planned some kind
of resistance if denied admission. They thought they had an
enforceable right under the terms of workers democracy not to be
excluded from a public meeting! Exclusionism is Stalinist, and they
don't have to take it and won't! Of course, in this particular case,
this _could_ be all my imagination.
srd
stephen
> I do not presume that my own subjective impressions would be
> the same as a Healyite thug calling to read his fellow revisionists
> out of the workers movement.
I don't understand this. Who is the thug, the fellow revisionists?
stephen
>
> No. I characterized violence as alien to the SL political culture
> as I, a mild-mannered former DeLeonist, encountered it.
Come on; you *argued* that inhabitants of the observed political
culture was *in fact* unlikely to commit acts of violence against
other workers tendencies.
srd
David Stevens
>
> I suspect almost everyone on the far left would take my
> (strong) position against the SL. (This goes to the position's
> weight re Robertsonism.)
Here, I wonder as to what is "far." Not Proyect, you say -- but
probably not LRP, I'd imagine.
> Any "contractual" right that SDS had is trumped in the
> immediate circumstances by NPAC's actual possession
> of the premises. (The analogy to bourgeois law is for
> understanding, not automatic validity when applied.)
During the 1899-1900 split, DeLeon's faction fought a physical
battle for possession of SLP office premises. They also went to
the bourgeois court to declare themselves lawful possessors.
One one hand, they had it right about party control of the press;
on the other, it seems clear to me that -- although we can defend
DeLeon's faction by the light of Leninism -- SLP lacked such light.
That seems clear in restrospect, as SLP historiography treats the
victory in capitalist court as if it confirmed their legitimacy.
I contrast the method to Freedom Socialist Party's defense
in the New Freedom Hall case (where they got sued by a
sniveling ex-member).
DeLeon had been a professor of international law at Columbia.
He considered the voting franchise to be the "civilized" way to
resolve disputes. That he had, or acquired, some grip on the
Marxist theory of state is shown by his opposition to the Kautsky
Resolution, notable in 1904 at the Amsterdam Congress. SLP
even picked up and used Lenin's line calling it the Kaotchouk
(India rubber) Resolution.
> This "understanding" of workers democracy is one the SL has long held.
> In Madison Wisconsin circe 1970, I held a publicly advertised Workers
> League class. A couple of Sparts came from Detroit (I think it was) to
> intervene. I wouldn't think of excluding them. (Not after their long
> trip. What, am I supposed to be as inhospitable as Paris?)
One hopes not. Nor, in other ways, as hospitable. ;-)
> But I could
> tell they expect an exclusion attempt; they were surprised at their
> immediate admission.
This brings me the laughter of recognition. I have no doubt at all
that it was exactly was you relate.
One of the first times I saw a live Spart was at a public event
on a campus. I stopped by their lit table, got some stuff, and
went on to the SWP table. The SWP had paid enough attention
to see that I'd been at the Spart table, but not enough to realize
that I was just part of the public, so they were pretty rude.
I did not take it personally -- but I did take it politically.
> It was fairly clear that they planned some kind
> of resistance if denied admission. They thought they had an
> enforceable right under the terms of workers democracy not to be
> excluded from a public meeting! Exclusionism is Stalinist, and they
> don't have to take it and won't! Of course, in this particular case,
> this _could_ be all my imagination.
Here, I think "planned some kind of resistance" goes overboard.
Unless you mean, leafleting from outside. (The ISO liked to say
that leaflet polemicization is an "attack").
Once, I was excluded from a SWP public meeting at Berkeley.
They had people at the door with the specific job of identifying
any Workers League or Spartacist League and excluding them.
Given previous experience, I was not surprised that SWP elected
to exclude me, too. (After all, they had seen me engage some of
the outside agitators!) It allowed me to complete my education
in a way that attending a dumbass Militant forum would not.
I studied the WL and SL and the reactions of those who were
coming to the forum. The WL had their usual stuff, copies of
the Bulletin, plus a leaflet calling SWP "revisionist" and expecting
the general public reader to know what it meant -- from among
a public that will only look at a socialist paper if it has a
wimp name like _Bulletin_ or _News Line_, at that.
The SL had their usual WV kit, _plus_ a leaflet custom written
for the very occasion, along the lines of Why We Are Being
Excluded from Tonight's Forum.
I was impressed.
I tasted irony, too. In the first place, had the SWP simply
admitted one mild mannered DeLeonist, I never would have
learned about the Spartacists' attention to detail.
But even funnier: had SWP allowed the Spartacists inside, the
entire Spart leaflet would have been rendered invalid. They
planned on being excluded far more effectively than the
SWP planned to exclude them, "politically speaking."
Having had plenty of time to read the SL and WL leaflets,
I decided that the SWP policy was exceptionally stupid.
No doubt, had they allowed their opponents inside, the
Q&A session would have been more lively than SWP
preferred. What routinism! The political blows they took
would not have told to any better effect. And the Sparts
would have had to rely on their talking points.
I am pretty sure that all those independents who get inside
managed to get a copy of one or both leaflets anyway.
- David Stevens
David Stevens
>
> > No. I characterized violence as alien to the SL political culture
> > as I, a mild-mannered former DeLeonist, encountered it.
>
> Come on; you *argued* that inhabitants of the observed political
> culture was *in fact* unlikely to commit acts of violence against
> other workers tendencies.
Yes, I _still_ argue that. Based on my subjective impressions.
Objective data is always trumps.
I meant to say something about Freedom Socialist Party, as far
as culture goes, too. I have a lot of political differences with them,
in paper position and the real-world consequences of politically
speaking.
But subjectively, I consider their culture to be strong in a way
that nurtures and develops their comrades' capacities.
I can point to some objective data: they have an accessible
storefront, make arrangements for childcare and feeding,
stuff like that .. but it's nothing that really admits to objective
treatment when I say they have a positive socialist internal
culture I can admire.
I take it as my duty to give the devil his due. I ranted in APST
against the Pink Tide, but in that did not keep me from
serving on an IWW defense squad for an ISO public meeting.
- David Stevens
-------------------
In June [1998], the ISO initiated a demonstration in response
to a racist assault in San Francisco's Haight Ashbury district.
By accident, the ISO printed the personal telephone number of
one of their members on a leaflet; that person was deluged
with multiple death threats. The local Wobs answered the
ISO's request for a defense team to ensure that ISO's public
planning meeting could be held without incident ... which,
of course, it was. (All bullies are cowards. The sort of
racist scum willing to assault an isolated minority couple
aren't as bold when it comes to confronting a deliberate
and organized response).
I was having a good week, so I participated. (At my age,
I am too old and slow to chase a fascist, but I figured
I might sit upon one and keep it from bothering people).
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. (More recently, some local
members of the IWW forgot this, too). 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.
David Stevens
>
> What is also interesting about the popular frontist line followed by the
> SWP during the anti-Vietnam War movement is that most of the SWP's
> 1960s and 1970s critics have actually these days completely embraced
> the single-issue non-exclusion campaign notion. A good recent example
> in NZ is from the protests against French testing at Moruroa in 1995.
>
> For instance, in Wellington the IBT successfully moved a motion in the
> main anti-testing group (NON!) that it be a single-issue campaign based
> solely around the demand "Stop the Tests!" Anyone who supported that
> could join. Well, the entire NZ ruling class was opposed to French
> nuclear testing at Moruroa, because NZ capital has its own interests in
> the Pacific. Limiting testing groups to that demand - a demand
> supported by the whole ruling class here - was therefore popular
> frontist. No member of the ruling class could have been excluded after
> the IBT got their popular frontist motion passed in NON! The result was
> that the IBT helped organise a NON! march with people carrying banners
> saying "French Scum!" and "Fuck the French!" (needless to say these
> banners did not appear in the coverage in "1917"!)
This instance of "revisionism" comes from what are Robertsonites
in Diamond's paradigm.
The Latter-Day Spartacists offered an example -- of something --
when they accused the International Group of "playing the counterfeit
card of anti-Americanism."
What does it mean during wartime (asked IG), for LDS to bait its
socialist opponents as "anti-American?"
But even right after Norden's expulsion, LDS was willing to descend
into zoological dehumanization to characterize the IG.
In "Spartacist Laager, Norden Castle," I wrote [8 July 1997]:
"Meanwhile, there's the Laager. They've made a ring around
the old Castle Spartakusbund. They don't care about those
Norden peasants on two other sides of them. They think of
those peasants as wild animals, as bores and as iglets."
LDS has stopped using the "IGlets" line, at least in public.
But it's really the thought that counts.
LDS exhibits neither classic Bernstein-type revisionism nor
classic Bordiga-type ultraleftism.
Which isn't to call it one sick puppy. It polemicizes Wikipedia
while aspiring to a mere 50% solution for its own accuracy.
- David Stevens
stephen
> Stephen Diamond:
>
>
>
> > I suspect almost everyone on the far left would take my
> > (strong) position against the SL. (This goes to the position's
> > weight re Robertsonism.)
>
> Here, I wonder as to what is "far." Not Proyect, you say -- but
> probably not LRP, I'd imagine.
Far left - the usual journalistic meaning. Stalinists leftward. I'd be
interested in the LRP's view.
srd
stephen
> Here, I think "planned some kind of resistance" goes overboard.
> Unless you mean, leafleting from outside. (The ISO liked to say
> that leaflet polemicization is an "attack").
That's no doubt true. The relations of forces didn't favor them. What
if, or when, they dominate numerically? Do you figure they would draw
the line at leafletting?
srd
David Stevens
>
> > > I suspect almost everyone on the far left would take my
> > > (strong) position against the SL. (This goes to the position's
> > > weight re Robertsonism.)
>
> > Here, I wonder as to what is "far." Not Proyect, you say -- but
> > probably not LRP, I'd imagine.
>
> Far left - the usual journalistic meaning. Stalinists leftward.
Thanks. It makes this a lot easier for me.
I consider the Stalinists part of the workers movement.
(A syphilitic sore is still a body part). If there were a
mailing list run by an Omni-Tendency Soviet, I would
expect Stalinists to count among Omni Tendencies.
Avowed social democrats, too, of course.
But Proyect doesn't seem to take _your_ position, and
I agree with _him_ about bullhorns.
I was at a support rally for SEIU. The bureaucracy gave
whistles out, which proved a very good way to make a lot
of noise without allowing even small group conversation.
A young unionist blew her whistle into my hairy old ear.
Wow, I said. That's really obnoxious.
She looked hurt. I felt like I had kicked a puppy.
They _gave_ us these whistles, she whimpered.
Well then, I replied, I'm glad they didn't give you any
tactical nuclear weapons.
She was too young to appreciate any Albert Shanker
jokes. But I agree with Proyect on the bullhorns.
> I'd be interested in the LRP's view.
Me, too. I had the non-LRP Gilders in mind when I wrote
APST Table of Rejoinders #1011 (" ...until you have read the
most recent volume of our opus, 'Towards a Socialist Theory
of Hypertrophy'"). He kept wanting to argue Daum's theory
of state cap without giving us anything to chew. But Daum
himself has posted to APST a few times.
- David Stevens
stephen
> But Proyect doesn't seem to take _your_ position, and
> I agree with _him_ about bullhorns.
I get that he takes my position, or vice versa, for somewhat different
reasons. Did the Sparts have bullhorns?
srd
David Stevens
>
> > Here, I think "planned some kind of resistance" goes overboard.
> > Unless you mean, leafleting from outside. (The ISO liked to say
> > that leaflet polemicization is an "attack").
>
> That's no doubt true. The relations of forces didn't favor them. What
> if, or when, they dominate numerically? Do you figure they would draw
> the line at leafletting?
Personally, subjectively -- yes. I would, as Trotsky said
in a somewhat more important context, stake my life on it.
I have observed what I consider bureaucratism (that's supposed
to be a surprise?), and once I induced the reaction James Paris
used to call "the Spartacist Bouncing Betty."
I had unfavorably contrasted the then-current SL line on Mexico
with the SL (and Kirk-Kaye, FSP) positions on the Vietnam War.
My respondent did NOT jump eighteen inches into the air, but
I understand that it may have seemed that way to others.
His was a wholly nonviolent reaction. I merely characterize it as
highly animated. (Perhaps, as a psychologist, you might have
said agitated). In my experience, people often get that way.
I cannot say that a passion for one's politics is A Bad Thing.
I will say that one thing I admire about the Freedom Socialists
is their ability to listen to sincere criticism. Everybody listens a
little, and _nobody_ wants to be told that their baby is ugly.
But you can see that Freedom Socialist's paper ran my
criticism of calling Healy a rapist .. alongside the letter of
somebody who wanted to vote for John Kerry. That's
about how it would work in person, too.
- David Stevens
stephen
> > That's no doubt true. The relations of forces didn't favor them. What
> > if, or when, they dominate numerically? Do you figure they would draw
> > the line at leafletting?
>
> Personally, subjectively -- yes. I would, as Trotsky said
> in a somewhat more important context, stake my life on it.
I see no basic difference between forcefully demanding entry and
engaging in excludable conduct. No basic difference between trying to
keep Hartke from speaking and forcing one's way into the meeting in
order to accomplish the same.
srd
David Stevens
>
> I get that he takes my position, or vice versa, for somewhat different
> reasons. Did the Sparts have bullhorns?
I never heard anybody say that. Progressive Labor had them,
according to Louis Proyect. He charged a series of violent attacks
by PL on what he called the antiwar movement in Boston; at NPAC:
+
+ ... The PL/SDS
+ leaders began using bullhorns. This was the long and short of it.
+ Unless they were thrown out, the meeting could not have continued.
+
+ The role of the Spartacist League was to assist the PL/SDSers.
I don't have any other report of bullhorns, so it is a judgement call for
a historiographer. But Louis' words have the _subjective_ ring of truth
to my ears. He wrote about it elsewhere, not inconsistently, and was
still angry about the bullhorns. I would be angry, too.
Ultimately, to say that one is for workers democracy means to
examine the concrete issues. Otherwise, it is like saying that
one is for socialism. So I can see why you regard the issue as
significant, but you'd better believe that I won't be careless in
examining the facts outside my view (which means, nearly all
of the concretely then-immediate facts) for approximately the
same reason. (I think our motives differ). :-P
I've seen principled behavior, sometimes under difficult circumstances,
from members of truly rotten organizations. I've seen lots of people
smarter than me act as if they were stupid, too.
And if whatever I might conclude some day about NPAC means that
by definition you do not consider me a Robertsonite, then perhaps
I must reverse my demand not to be one, and declare conjunctural
solidarity with a whole group of tendencies you might objectively be
setting up for repression.
Decades ago, the Spartacists sued the State of California for
the SL's inclusion on a terrorist watch list. (They won). They
sued the Unification Church (Moonie) newspaper in DC for
libeling them as "violent." (They got retraction).
Where the LDS is heading, I think the day will come that they
no longer care about their reputation very much. The last dozen
years or so are suggestive. But hell, I like to take the long view.
The global working class as a whole has attained a higher level
of consciousness and development than it had 600 years ago.
In any event _I_ will still care about their reputation, just as
I care for reputation of every tendency in the labor movement.
Incautiously setting up someone as "violent" can hurt, not just
politically speaking.
An Injury to One is An Injury to All!
- David Stevens
David Stevens
>
> I see no basic difference between forcefully demanding entry and
> engaging in excludable conduct. No basic difference between trying to
> keep Hartke from speaking and forcing one's way into the meeting in
> order to accomplish the same.
Does the Omni-Tendency Soviet have guidelines for democratic
votes before conduct is deemed excludable? Or were such guidelines
posted at the door?
I have not yet determined the case about NPAC.
Maybe you can tell us stories about Omni-Tendency in the meantime.
I find the whole idea very .. artistic.
- David Stevens
David Stevens
>
> + ... The PL/SDS
> + leaders began using bullhorns. This was the long and short of it.
One may wonder -- there seems to have been no shortage of security
marshals at NPAC -- why guys with bullhorns were allowed in. But
I can make a VERY strong case that security ought not to be too
overbearing, or preemptive at all. After all, that is what part of this
is about.
So, as soon as the "leaders" with "bullhorns" get disruptive,
immediately throw out all the leaders here defined as dim bulbs
with high amplification. Politically speaking, I might say:
KICK OUT EVERYONE USING A BULLHORN.
Every single detailed report made it clear that there was
a lot of time involved. Hartke spoke. Reuther spoke, etc.
So if Proyect was correct -- they should have tossed those guys
out earlier.
No other participant reported bullhorns: what disruptions they
were concerned with, then or in reports from memory, were
focused on PL's "disruptive" behavior and their defense by a
political opponent-cum-fellow-SDS-faction. So I will treat
that as the political point of these dead little doggies.
- David Stevens
David Stevens
> than I am to Proyect's arguments against it. It does not take me
> much to see an opening wedge against the First Amendment in
> many arguments from the loosey goosey left.
Speaking of laws against "commercial speech" opening a wedge
against the First Amendment --
"Ad Ban Applies to Noncommercial Speech-C.A."
_Metropolitan News-Enterprise_ [9 Sept 2008]
http://www.metnews.com/articles/2008/shar091008.htm
++ .. court of appeal yesterday rejected a constitutional challenge
++ to a West Hollywood ordinance banning "mobile billboard
++ advertising" by a nonprofit group seeking to broadcast graphic
++ images of animal abuse on large video screens mounted on a truck.
Freedoms of speech -- and freedoms of association -- can not be
artificially delimited to a noncommercial sphere of a society where
the commerce is all-embracing.
Well-meaning reformers -- who think that capitalist law can be retouched
to the benefit of anticapitalists -- are objectively suicidal.
Proyect's "left" argument against commercial speech ultimately
resolves to a touching faith in the capitalist State. It is not the
position of Marxists, but of willing charcoal briquettes.
- David Stevens
stephen
> Incautiously setting up someone as "violent" can hurt, not just
> politically speaking.
>
> An Injury to One is An Injury to All!
But then, you, Mr. Robertsonite, do not appear to worry about setting
up the SWP (U.S.) as violent. And if the Sparts weren't, the SWP was.
(The WL/SEP no longer matters, as it is a capitalist party.)
srd
stephen
>
>
>
> > I see no basic difference between forcefully demanding entry and
> > engaging in excludable conduct. No basic difference between trying to
> > keep Hartke from speaking and forcing one's way into the meeting in
> > order to accomplish the same.
>
> Does the Omni-Tendency Soviet have guidelines for democratic
> votes before conduct is deemed excludable? Or were such guidelines
> posted at the door?
It suffices that everyone knew there were marshalls, who would act to
prevent disruption. Why else have marshalls? Do you actually imagine
that the SL thought trying to stop a speaker from speaking accorded
with democratic norms?
I disagree with your Legal Marxist approach. The issue is workers
democracy, not the legal sufficiency of the posted rules. Bullhorns
can be concealed. Are you suggesting a search? It wasn't the
conference organizers task to make sure PL didn't bring any toys that
might tempt. But perhaps you can determine whether the SL knew of the
bullhorns and their planned use. Or maybe you would even stipulate to
that as obvious. And there seems agreement that the SL continued
blocking with PL in the Hartke disruption, even after PL brought out
the bullhorns, and also important regarding SL's integrity, *their*
reports of the conference never seem to have mentioned PL's bullhorns.
srd
stephen
Your argument is nothing but the SWP (U.S.)'s argument favoring
defense of freedom of speech for for fascists, repackaged to address
commercial speech. Legalistic considerations, such as maintaining
bright lines, are always secondary to the class forces involved.
srd
David Stevens
>
> > Incautiously setting up someone as "violent" can hurt, not just
> > politically speaking.
> >
> > An Injury to One is An Injury to All!
>
> But then, you, Mr. Robertsonite, do not appear to worry about setting
> up the SWP (U.S.) as violent.
I said I would _help_ toss out any bullhorn-yielding dimwits, politically
speaking.
But I noted that bourgeois law would not favor an assault on people
who were leaving anyway. Workers democracy has a different
standard; but its advocates have the right to be suspicious when
it asserts a result more physically violent, in defending the flow of ideas,
than the bourgeoisie uses to defend its property.
I'm not above asserting that both sides were wrong. We now have
the advantage of hindsight. (Whatever I, personally, would have done
at the time would more likely be wrong than right). But we don't have
better _facts_ now than we did in 1971.
> And if the Sparts weren't, the SWP was.
Yes. Violence did occur. Why can't we all just get along?
> (The WL/SEP no longer matters, as it is a capitalist party.)
Does that mean they don't get a seat on the Omni-Tendency Soviet?
I protest! Admit all slimeballs equally to the Omni-Tendency!
Defend the anti-union Woos-Woos website!
Fake Trotsky FAQ! Fake Trotsky FAQ!
- David Stevens
stephen
> Louis Proyect:
>
>
>
> > + ... The PL/SDS
> > + leaders began using bullhorns. This was the long and short of it.
>
> One may wonder -- there seems to have been no shortage of security
> marshals at NPAC -- why guys with bullhorns were allowed in. But
> I can make a VERY strong case that security ought not to be too
> overbearing, or preemptive at all. After all, that is what part of this
> is about.
>
> So, as soon as the "leaders" with "bullhorns" get disruptive,
> immediately throw out all the leaders here defined as dim bulbs
> with high amplification. Politically speaking, I might say:
>
> KICK OUT EVERYONE USING A BULLHORN.
>
> Every single detailed report made it clear that there was
> a lot of time involved. Hartke spoke. Reuther spoke, etc.
>
> So if Proyect was correct -- they should have tossed those guys
> out earlier.
So what? We aren't discussing whether the SWP acted competently, or at
least I'm not. In any event, I have little personal doubt Fred
Halstead is a goon. (Doesn't anyone realize that psychiatrically
normal people do not get *that* obese?) The question isn't whether the
SWP violated democratic norms but whether, given the SWP's conduct,
the SL violated democratic norms unjustifiably, enough to make the
SWP's side the correct side in the smash up.
srd
David Stevens
>
> Your argument is nothing but the SWP (U.S.)'s argument favoring
> defense of freedom of speech for for fascists, repackaged to address
> commercial speech. Legalistic considerations, such as maintaining
> bright lines, are always secondary to the class forces involved.
upon the State is a suicidal, truly fatal illusion.
Your argument depends on a false dichotomy, often presented
by the popfront milieu : _Either_ support free speech for fascists,
_or_ call for laws to "Ban the Klan" and Nazis.
- David Stevens
stephen
> Stephen Diamond:
>
>
>
> > I get that he takes my position, or vice versa, for somewhat different
> > reasons. Did the Sparts have bullhorns?
>
> I never heard anybody say that. Progressive Labor had them,
> according to Louis Proyect. He charged a series of violent attacks
> by PL on what he called the antiwar movement in Boston; at NPAC:
Now here's something for you to look into! If this is true, then the
SL's bloc with PL at the NPAC conference is particularly despicable.
srd
stephen
LM defended the tobacco company's speech. The laws involved are laws
against fraud. Would you repeal them, to secure "freedom" in
commercial speech? WHO called for laws against tobacco? That liberal
demand wasn't part of the dispute with LM in these pages.
srd
Tom Cod
1971 as an 18 year old fresh out of high school, I would have to say
that while I found PL and the Sparts provocation inappropriate and
outrageous and still do, I think it was really telling that the SWP,
for all its talk about not relying on Democrats and not openly
blocking with them like the CP and PCPJ supposedly did, the SWP while
not doing that, had the distinction
of not just inviting a bourgois politician to speak, Sen Hartke, but a
notoriously slimey one, that that the CP
and PCPJ would have been embarassed to be seen around, a guy that as I
recall got convicted of
taking bribes.
I remember at one point during this Hunter College event being sent
over to a PCPJ function across town where Jane Fonda as I recall was
set to speak, to set up a table for NPAC and being struck by the
entirely different social and political environment. Maybe it was
just too petty bourgois, but the absence of all the wretched and
dejected nerds of the SWP and its progeny was refreshing.
Unfortunately I didn't stay long as this Stalinist dude came over and
told me to get the fuck out because they're might be violence
emanating from those
supporting the "Vietnamese People" so after a quick call to command
central I beat it out of there. No creeps like Hartke there though,
the likes of McGovern was about as far as they would go.
>
> So what? We aren't discussing whether the SWP acted competently, or at
> least I'm not. In any event, I have little personal doubt Fred
> Halstead is a goon. (Doesn't anyone realize that psychiatrically
> normal people do not get *that* obese?) The question isn't whether the
> SWP violated democratic norms but whether, given the SWP's conduct,
> the SL violated democratic norms unjustifiably, enough to make the
> SWP's side the correct side in the smash up.
>
> srd
>
>
>
>
>
> > No other participant reported bullhorns: what disruptions they
> > were concerned with, then or in reports from memory, were
> > focused on PL's "disruptive" behavior and their defense by a
> > political opponent-cum-fellow-SDS-faction. So I will treat
> > that as the political point of these dead little doggies.
>
> > - David Stevens- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -
David Stevens
It's illuminating to hear from someone who was _there_
with NPAC at the time (and is here with us now).
>. No creeps like Hartke there though,
> the likes of McGovern was about as far as they would go.
A point of personal reference is that I supported
McGovern in 1972, being very stupid politically.
(Not in the same way I am now).
- David Stevens
David Stevens
> ... .. also important regarding SL's integrity, *their*
> reports of the conference never seem to have
> mentioned PL's bullhorns.
(1) Neither does Tom Cod's report mention bullhorns.
(Neither did any of several reports I have from other
SWP or ex-YSA people). There is no proof that
the SL was _dishonest_ about what happened,
accepting of course that each participant views things
through his own political lens: fog of war, and all that.
(2) Neither would proving the _lack_ of bullhorns even
establish Proyect as a liar; he could innocently conflate a
couple similar things in the period -- "bjorn" showed
some of the other stuff going on (and Louis wrote about
things in Boston I haven't yet learned about).
More importantly (for the "real" dead dog), the lack of
bullhorns does not alibi the Spartacist disruption of the
meeting. Maybe something else does? I don't know.
This was the kind of stuff that "turned me off" to Marxism
at that moment in history. (I became a hippie).
With my current perspective, I'm obliged to look at
things differently. I am sympathetic to the underlying
antiwar line of the SL, as opposed to "fusing" with
Hartke-type defeatists. But I explicitly reject tactics
such as the SL used at NPAC (in real life, as well as
politically speaking). So how the fuck am I supposed
to decide which Wrong is greater in context?
I think you go to far to charge the Sparts with violence,
if they got kicked downstairs in the process of leaving.
(I have no reports of people getting kicked down any
stairs there, BTW).
Consider from the framework of:(a) seeing fellow SDSers
get attacked and (b) rushingto the rival SDS faction's
defense. It might or might not be a bad call.
It does not support _your_ claim that the SL entered
on a course of provocation with the intent of starting
something violent, or tantamount to violence. (Indeed,
it seems like the SL had only some admixture of intent
plus witlessness in the first place).
I have seen comrades defend maoists against cops, only
to get bonked by the maoists. That shit happens.
An opponent's lack of principle does not excuse me
for following suit.
- David Stevens