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It's often been observed that the danger of looking back on the experience of former members of an organization like the SWP is most people tend to want to date its degeneration from their own disaffection with it. The lines of the faction fight of 1971 or of 1973-74 were never clear save in the minds of some of those engaged in the fight. There were many reasons for this, but the most important was that the leadership of the party saw everything turning on an organizational triumph, even at the cost of entirely smudging the argument. Conversely, the defining position of the SWP, that prediction of a mass rebellion of student youth detonating rebellions across the country . . . a broadening and deepening radicalization that would continue until the question of power was posed . . . that cornerstone position has somehow disappeared faster than the SWP's dominance on the American far left. Maybe there's a connection. I'm always for keeping the record clear enough for critical thinkers to unravel, but refighting old battles over organizations that are essentially dead Beyond some modest pains to keep the record straight, Marx never seems to have been nostalgic or defense about organizations that he head joined, founded, or with which he had been allied. He understood them as tools with very specific functions. When he thought their utility was done, he went on to do other things. Not a bad approach. ML ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: [email protected] Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
