At 4:44 AM 1/18/95, Elaine Bernard wrote: >Come'on Doug, play nice. In the same spirit that I took up >J. Case, I'm sure you don't mean CP as a term of endearment. >Play nice boys! There's some real politics here, so cut out >the red baiting bullshit. I'm not redbaiting at all, I'm describing a real tendency, a habit of thought. The original franchisee (their term, not mine) in NYC was James Steele, former chief CP theoretician on Africa. They merged with the Majority Coalition, sponsored by 1199, a union long intimate with the CP. The CP tendency, politically, is characterized by a taste for central committee styles of government and "critical support" (i.e. deals with) the Democrats. Both these styles are visible in the NYC New (Coalition) Party. CP people also use the word Trotskyist as a term of abuse (as do ex-CPers like Jim Weinstein). I thought its application to me was quite emblematic of this impulse. >I think the real CP, Trotskyist, >New Left, American Left legacy is ignoring political differences >and real discussion and decending everything to the level of >name calling. If you don't agree with me, you're a (fill in >the gap) and therefore your criticism is unworthy of further >concern or debate. When I called them CP, I wasn't trying to tar them really. It was purely descriptive. I'm not an anti-communist. I'll even defend the Soviet Union, if you'd like. > >On the issue of NYC I tend to think that it is rather unusual. >The largest city in the country, with strange, strange, politics. >I wish Mike Davis who move there and do for NY what he did >for LA in CITY OF QUARTZ. However, that aside, I do think >that in building a grassroots, democratic, membership based >political party that Madison, Milwaukee, Little Rock, etc >will be more typical than NYC. No doubt you can build interesting and powerful things outside a power center like New York City. My point, though, was that while local organizing is fine, there's a national and global ruling class to contend with, and that (supra)national r.c. is more like the forces you confront in NYC than the ones you confront in Little Rock. As our hopeless president demonstrates daily. Bob Fitch writes very well on NYC. Doug Henwood [[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Left Business Observer 250 W 85 St New York NY 10024-3217 USA 212-874-4020 voice 212-874-3137 fax
