On Fri, Oct 3, 2014 at 3:40 PM, Joseph Catron <[email protected]> wrote:
> Thanks, Carrol. That's very interesting in its own right, and I hope > you'll continue it, but it answers a somewhat different question than mine, > which I probably wrote unclearly. Or you might be coming around to it; I'm > not sure. > > I was asking less about the political or tactical orientation of > campaigns, and more about the time management of individuals. Let's say > you, I, and Maxim are a chapter of some left group, active on labor > support, Palestine solidarity and prison abolition. > > Is it more efficient for each of us to work on all three issues? Or would > we be better off divvying them up, regardless of how we connect the dots in > our public messaging about them? > > That's an oversimplication, of course, as things rarely break down so > neatly and I'm more interested in the dynamics of larger groups. Mostly, > I'm curious about left activists in general, as a big, dysfunctional > collective, and how each of us can best direct ourselves. > > Hi Joseph. I think Carrol was laying the groundwork for something and grew woozy before he could get there. So I suspect that when he finishes he will respond to your question. My thought, not as profound as Carrol's follows. And it is a rule of thumb, with plenty of exceptions. First it would be impossible for any one person to work on every issue. And if you divide your time equally on even a few that can be almost as bad. So I think it is best, in most circumstances for an individual within a group to focus on one issue or at most a few related issues that cannot be separated even in the short run. For example, if you are organizing in a union, issues of racism and sexism are likely to come up, and in many cases be a fundamental part of how workers are oppressed. For instance the Coalition of Immokallee Workers, massive sexual harassment and even rape was one of the issues the tomato pickers organized around. At the same time it is good to put some time into an issue not so directly related to your main focus. Just as a matter of keeping your mental muscles from stiffening. I don't know a better way to put. OK an example: the main issue I work on is climate . But I also put some time into supporting Palestinian rights. There a number of reasons for my choice to put some (not a ton) of time into this. But among my other reasons is a selfish one. Because of the huge popular support for Israel in the US, supporting Palestinian rights is deeply unpopular in the US. That is in the process of changing but has not yet changed. Whereas a large part of the population agrees on the existence of the climate crisis. But the thing is while "feel-good" crap on the climate is popular, actually pointing out that it ties to class and race and gender disparities is not popular. And it is very easy to for an activist to slip into the feel-good crap. Cause if you focus on certain aspects of the issue that are nonetheless quite real, you get lots of warm fuzzies. And if you stray outside those limits you get massive ridicule and various types of pain. Whereas, there really is no warm fuzzy safe zone in which to support Palestinian rights. Not if you want to give serious support. So working on this issue helps keep my hide from growing thin And that makes harder to herd into the "safe" zone on the climate issue. Now this is just one example of one personal benefit. But I think in general that most people benefit from putting the majority of their effort at one time into a narrow focus, but putting a minority of their effort into something completely unrelated just so that one particular mental muscle does not get muscle bound and inflexible while others get flacid. Again, don't really like the analogy, but it is as close as I can come. What it amounts to, is that to be good a politics you need to continue to develop as a person. While part of that is not spending 100% of your time on politics, another part is that within the work you do on politics, getting some variety, without splitting your attention too many ways and losing the advantages of specialization. Also focus, can and in many cases will shift over time. So that even if you are mostly focused on one thing at a particular time, you shift to another at another time. And most will. If activism is not how you make your living, meaning you are doing them in your spare time, then for most what is the priority or cogent issue will shift over time. Although you are asking about division of labor within a group that has decided to focus on multiple issues, there is a related question of how much a group should focus on. And I think that depends on how many people and resources you have. I think it is great for a group to have theoretical or ideological focus, and you know have positions a whole bunch of issues when it comes to things like giving endorsement. In the small activist group I'm part of we endorse campaigns every month, allowing our group name to be added on to petitions and literature, and also donate small sums of money to various causes. But of course as a small group we only put the majority of our work into two or three issues each year, and some minor work into - mostly solidarity stuff where we add our bodies to a campaign someone else has organized, or help do publicity for something others ahve organzied. If there is ever a leftist group as big as the old CP with 80,000 or so members and millions of supporters and sympathizers then it could have active sub-groups working on every major issue. And of course these are at most rules of thumb. Lot's of exception. Who knows? maybe they are the exceptions and there are better rules of thumb. > On Sat, Oct 4, 2014 at 12:34 AM, Carrol Cox <[email protected]> wrote: > >> Joseph Catron Friday, October 03, 2014 12:05 PM A query on single- vs. >> multi-issue activists >> >> I've recently discussed whether activists who focus their efforts mostly >> on one issue, or those working on multiple fronts at once, accomplish more. >> (I'm inclined to think the former.) >> >> But it occurs to me that some Marxist grouping or another must have taken >> the time to examine this very question more scientifically when figuring >> out how to best steer its members. >> >> So what say you all? Has anyone actually looked at it methodically? >> >> .----------- >> >> Probably unanswerable. I’ve come down with a cold today & not thinking >> very clearly, but perhaps I can give a few observations. >> >> A. First some history. During the ‘60s the SWP insisted that anti-war >> coalitions be single issue. They gve various arguments for this but there >> were deeper grounds, ultra-left and sectarian, which generated this stand, >> and which _also_ grounded the SWP’s insistence that marches & rallies be >> peaceful and legal. (Note: “Peaceful” is radically different from >> “Non-violent”: the latter phrase is cut off at the neck; the complete >> phrase is “non-violent civil disobedience.” (As has been reported >> recently, MLK’s house had weapons in every room. Non-Violence for him was >> strictly a strategy, not a moral position. And he and others in the SCLC >> never objected to the quiet preparation of some grops to defend non-violent >> demonstrators.) >> >> Now, a peaceful, legal march and rally featuring only one issue (End the >> War Now) could be trusted as it were not to trigger debate and political >> discussion among the demonstrators. Why was this desirable? Well, the SWP >> believed that there was one and only one correct revolutionary theory, and >> that theory was the unique possession of the SWP. Workers and others could >> not be trusted on their own to reach the correct political perceptions. >> Rather, all political development must be under the care and guidance of >> the One True Faith: Trotsky as taught by the leadership of the SWP. >> >> This is the worst sort of ultra-leftism. (“Ultra-Leftism” refers or >> should r efer not to tactics but to the political understasnding generating >> the tactic. Ultra-leftism (or Left Opportunism) consists in over-estimating >> the strength of the capitalist class, under-estimating the strength of the >> working class. Now strength of course is not mere military strength; it is >> above all consciousness, subordination to or freedom from bourgeois >> ideology. (Excuse the jargon here, but we are dealing with the history >> which generated such jargon and not to use it would distort history.) >> Reading Lars Lih would help here; either his book or his response to >> critics in a Historical Materialism symposium on the book. He points out >> that the interpretation of WIBD both by bourgeois scholars _and_ by >> defenders of Democratic Centralism is that the book is grounded in profound >> distrust of workers. Lih pretty convincingly denies this interpretation, >> arguing rather that it showed a profound _trust_ of workers and a strong >> discontent with the failure of the RSDLP to give revolutionary workers the >> support they needed and desired. The Trotsky/bourgeois/Stalinist/”Maoist” >> tradition, then, assumed that workers were inacapable without close >> guidance of reaching a correct understanding of the world and of >> revolutionary practice. Capitalist Ideology would always prevail among >> workers not guided by a Party in possession of the One True Faith. This >> profound distrust of workers then was at the core of the SWP’s insistence >> that the anti-war movement be single issue, peaceful, and legal. Then the >> SWP could recruit form the masses thereby mobilized, and carefully instruct >> them in the True Line. This is the heart of sectarianism. >> >> [A footnote here. Rosa Luxemburg was unfair to WITBD, and Lenin’s >> response to her criticism was to point out that he said the opposite of >> what she saw in the work. (See Draper’s “What have they Done to What is To >> Be done.” Luxemburg was ultimately a more important theorist than Lenin – >> but no one is perfect.] >> >> B. [I’m feeling woozy. I’ll continue later.] >> >> Carrol >> >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> pen-l mailing list >> [email protected] >> https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l >> > > > > -- > "Hige sceal þe heardra, heorte þe cenre, mod sceal þe mare, þe ure mægen > lytlað." > > _______________________________________________ > pen-l mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l > > -- Facebook: Gar Lipow Twitter: GarLipow Solving the Climate Crisis web page: SolvingTheClimateCrisis.com Grist Blog: http://grist.org/author/gar-lipow/ Online technical reference: http://www.nohairshirts.com
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