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David Stevens
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 Posted: Tue Aug 26, 2008 12:41 pm Post subject: Re: Cynthia McKinney - 9/11 Truthist? |
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|
"stephen" <srdiamond@gmail.com> replied:
+>
+> years ago, Gore Vidal appeared to be considering a
+> run for US Senator of California, as a Democrat. (In the
+> event, he didn't run).
+>
+> The Spartacist League/US mooted the idea of endorsing
+> Vidal. (In the event, they didn't either).
+>
+> I thought the Spartacists made a good case (if not a
+> correct one).
| Quote: |
Do you know if the IBT or the IG commented?
|
correction: Vidal *did* run [in 1982]. The Spartacists did not
endorse him. The proto-BT was only formed that October
(as an "external tendency of the SL"); the proto-IG was not
expelled until 1996.
Vidal lost the Demo primary to Jerry Brown (who lost
in November 1982 to Republican Pete Wilson).
Vidal had been a luminary in the 1970s "Peoples" Party,
an ephemeral national party with which the "Peace
and Freedom Party" of CPUSA's Herbert Apetheker
and baby doctor Benjamin Spock were associated.
A 1983 documentary, _Gore Vidal: The Man Who
Said NO_, details Vidal's 1982 run for Senate. A
QuickTime-format video clip is online at:
http://garyconklinfilms.com/GoreVidal.html
"There is only one party in the United States,
the Property Party...and it has two right wings:
Republican and Democrat. Republicans are a bit
stupider, more rigid, more doctrinaire in their
laissez-faire capitalism than the Democrats, who
are cuter, prettier, a bit more corrupt-until
recently... and more willing than the Republicans
to make small adjustments when the poor, the black,
the anti-imperialists get out of hand. But,
essentially, there is no difference between the
two parties."
-- Gore Vidal [*]
In remembrance of 1968 (when I was a liberal),
I'm happy to report that Vidal had the final words
in his decades-long feud with William F. Buckley, Jr.
(They were "Rest In Hell," somewhat elaborated).
+> Yet hundreds of Marcus Garvey clubs sprung up, propelling
+> blacks into political life in a way that they hadn't been before.
+> Few of those Negroes had any more intention of "returning"
+> to Africa than Garvey himself; rather, the movement outgrew
+> and ignored its formal programmatic bounds.
+>
+> That's dialectics.
| Quote: |
Can you spell out what makes this development or this
account dialectical?
|
Although I intended that as a punchline, I had in mind the
transformations from quantity into quality.
I also meant the Garvey example as something of a shocker --
"admittedly extreme," I'd warned the few Trots in our audience.
| Quote: | I haven' followed Kirk-Kaye, but I recall superficially looking at
them in 1965-1966, when I explored parties holding lines consistent
with my confused Maoist/Trotskyist consciousness. They and another
tendency--or perhaps the same one (Swabeck tendency) was quasi-Maoist.
|
Yes: Arne Swabeck was SWP/US' longtime resident Mao-oid opposition.
He was expelled with Kirk-Kaye, and parted their company later on.
| Quote: | I preferred the outright Maoist Marcyites at the time. I wonder if
Kirk-Kaye's Maoist proclivities carried over to the FSP.
|
Yes, to some extent. The programmatic basis is apparent in:
Clara Fraser and Richard Fraser, _Crisis and Leadership_,
(Red Letter Press, 2000) US$13.95, 192 pp. pbk.,
ISBN 0-932323-08-1.
What became FSP did not enthuse over the Great Proletarian
Cultural Revolution like Workers League did. (*That* offered
Spartacist grounds for a break with ICFI that didn't involve Cuba,
which Robertson had declared in IC discussions not to matter
very much).
FSP's current position on China:
Dr. Susan Williams, _Capitalism's Brutal Comeback in China_,
(Red Letter Press, 2003) US $4.50, 56 pp. pbk,
ISBN 0-932323-20-0.
Despite the title, they don't say that capitalism *made* its
comeback in China (only that it voraciously *is* making it).
Williams documents a vigorous workingclass resistance.
Her book is a good source of arguments against the
view that capitalism has been restored.
My own take: the FSP never considered Mao to be a generic
national stalinist, as I do. (Clara Fraser, even in the 1990s,
explicitly continued to regard Tito as the "unconscious Trotskyist"
she thought him in the 1950s, with all relevant implications for
her line on Cuba anytime after 1959).
I think FSP might not even take offense if I say also that
they were better Mandelites than Mandel was.
Richard Fraser ended up in the Democratic Party via DSOC
through the nammies (New American Movement). I honor him
as a theorist of revolutionary integrationism, however.
For Holmes to preen his ignorance on Kirk-Kaye means, in
large measure, that he spits on the Spartacist heritage too.
(Not that FSP would agree with *that*).
| Quote: | Well, let's get back to the initial point you raise. Might it
have been a good idea to support Vidal, running as a Democrat.
Or does running as a Green make McKinney unsupportable.
Frankly, I would have answered with an automatic no to both,
but I do have the sense that my position might be doctrinaire.
|
Yabbut, for some erstwhile comrades, a little Second International
maximalism might offer a healthy medicine. Old August Bebel seems
awfully advanced in the wake of what the IG calls "the massive
Red shift to the right" since 1989-1991.
That said, I am merely a whore commanding a higher price.
Put me on Gilligan's Island, give me the only vote in the world
to choose between Hitler on one hand and Ron Paul or Cynthia
McKinney on the other, then see how quickly I maybe make
a giant upsucking sound.
| Quote: | The question is, if the goal of electoral work is advancing the working
class toward political independence, how can it be accomplished from
within a bourgeois party?
|
The general case, naturally, is that it can't. (And I include all parties
of the petty bourgeoisie: pink, Green, and brown).
| Quote: | David Walters implies that the McKinney campaign might escape
this criticism, because the McKinney campaign is not a campaign *for*
the Greens, but isn't the struggle for class independence predicated
on the concept that classes express themselves politically through
parties. If the party question becomes secondary, isn't that itself a
major obstacle to political independence?
|
Proyect, and others, would argue that breaking the stranglehold
of the de facto (and increasingly, de jure) US two party system
would remove a preliminary obstacle to a class party.
I find it a sort of nonspontaneous confabulation to perceive
any favorable social-political terrain for that.
If some Unicorn of a conjuncture should appear, I also think
it no less likely to spring from a Libertarian direction as from
the Greens or the pinks.
A.G. Philbin posted [17 December 2007] about Ron Paul's
campaign as Libertarian (while continuing to represent about
twenty-two Texas counties as a Republican Congressman).
I disagree with Philbin as to the current imperial wars being
"the" overriding concern, for a reason *similar* to yours:
+ Meaningful action ... is whatever increases the confidence,
+ the autonomy, the initiative, the participation, the solidarity,
+ the equalitarian tendencies and the self -activity of the masses
+ and whatever assists in their demystification.
I will allow, hypothetically, that meaningful activity might
occur absent a Party. (Not much, nor for long).
Surely, Ron Paul is no "worse" than Cynthia McKinney.
He is not trying to feed the Leviathan. (Nor, unlike the
well-meaning McKinney, is he likely to do so by accident
or ignorance of what state power is about).
Ron Paul's virtues and vices are those of a *consistent*
Libertarian. He's not one of those fellows who expects
to reign in the Police State without reigning in the
Military-Industrial complex. He opposes US imperialism,
but only in the name of US "national sovereignty." Paul's
program -- like the 1976 electoral campaign of SWP/US --
regards imperialism as something which can be legislated
away, rather than an inherent feature of modern capitalism.
Ultimately, he is a crank who likes Ayn Rand.
The Good: In addition to opposing the Iraq War, Ron Paul
advocates US withdrawal from NATO and removing US troops
from foreign soil; calls for an end to the four-decade long
War on Drugs; opposed the USA PATRIOT Act and No Child
Left Behind; and is an adamant opponent of gun control.
The Bad: Dr. Paul (he's an Ob/Gyn, as is one of his daughters)
has introduced legislation to circumvent Roe v. Wade. He favors
abolition of the Federal Income Tax (and most Federal agencies).
He voted to invade Afghanistan, notwithstanding his chronic
"Troops Out of Everywhere" position.
The Weird: Ron Paul might be the last "hard money" guy ever
seen in bourgeois politics. (He wants to repeal the 1913
Federal Reserve Act). Paul doesn't regard the United Nations
as a den of thieves, any more than the pissles of Gloria La Riva's
party.. but he does advocate US withdrawal from the UN,
the better to protect USA "national sovereignty" from the
likes of UNESCO and Trick-or-Treat-for-UNICEF.
The Utterly Consistent: Unlike those Libertarians who call
for abolishing the welfare state even as they suck from its
sagging teats, Paul paid for his own children's college and
postgraduate work (rather than allow them to accept Federal
loans or other aid). Uniquely among politicos, he refuses
to accept a Congressional pension. As the only Ob/Gyn in
a rural Texas county, Dr. Paul refused to accept Medicare
or Medicaid payments .. but delivered babies _pro bono_
for women unable to pay. Despite a district on the coast
of the Gulf of Mexico, he opposes Federal flood insurance,
even, because it is governmentally subsidized (and doesn't
offer a choice of carriers to his classless "consumers").
No, I am not going to vote for the fellow.
But I judge his prospects for a socialist epiphany as being
every bit as good as McKinney's.
Prince Kropotkin said: All dog's chillums got somethin' to offer.
- David Stevens
[*] Gore Vidal, _Matters of Fact and of Fiction:
Essays 1973-1976_ (Random House, 1977),
ISBN 0-3944-1128-5, p. 268. |
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John Holmes
Guest
|
| Posted: Tue Aug 26, 2008 1:02 pm Post subject: Re: Cynthia McKinney - 9/11 Truthist? |
|
|
On Mon, 25 Aug 2008, David Stevens wrote:
| Quote: | Stephen, after Holmes, after my own reply to Holmes:
news:9c671a6f-e424-4bc2-9488-a0153bd38385@w24g2000prd.googlegroups.com...
+
+> >> I am no fan of Wohlforth to say the least, but to support the SWP
+> >> expelling him in 1964 is going too far.
+
+> > Holmes' formula -- is it a formula? -- smacks of what Stephen and Fran
+> > rightly called moralism.
+> > The Leninist answer, for those inside SWP/US, was somewhat less +
nuanced:
+> > Robertson, Mage, and White did
+> > not violate Party discipline. Wohlforth did.
+
+> Circa 1964 or 1965, the SWP was no longer a revolutionary party, so
+> violating its discipline may have been very stupid on his part, but
+> was not a crime. His grouping, whatever its many problems, had a
+> better political line by and large than the official SWP's, not a
+> worser.
If moralism is at issue at here, seemingly making an absolute
principle of party-discipline represents the moralistic pole.
Why do you suppose that Trotsky favored words like "intransigent,"
or that Luxemburg regarded Lenin as excessively "severe?"
|
I have no objection whatsoever to being called a moralist. But here
moralism is misplaced to say the least. Something Trotsky, Lenin and
Luxemburg all understood very well, whatever their occasional
differences, was that upholding the discipline of a revolutionary
party is a good thing, and of a non-revolutionary party ... a bad
thing.
| Quote: |
But a certain complexity might upset this diagnosis. Wohlforth could not
have defended a violation of discipline based on the non-revolutionary
character of the SWP, because he believed the SWP remained
revolutionary, before and immediately after the Robertsonite
expulsion.
I agree with your *logic*; but insist that my own reference to
discipline of "those inside SWP/US" applied in context only to
the Kirk-Kaye tendency.
|
Whether or not Wohlforth or Kirk or Kaye happened to *think* the
SWP was a revolutionary party is quite irrelevant, since it wasn't.
| Quote: | As to Wohlforth, he was *already* the creature of Healy. He was
dishonest enough to split two ways at once: ratting out the RT,
with whom he (earlier and later) claimed programmatic agreement;
yet professing, albeit momentarily, a loyalty to the SWP during the
internal crisis he provoked. Almost single-handedly, he prevented
a clean split over clearly-defined political issues which were bound
to separate the Healyites from the Majority from the Mandelites.
The Robertsonites, on the other hand, had no reason in
principle to avoid breaking the discipline of a party they
considered centrist.
I don't agree that the Robertsonites broke discipline; nor do
I agree with the view you expressed some years back to the effect
that the Majority was correct to expel the RT as it did.
|
They didn't. Not for moral reasons but for tactical reasons. They
wanted to win over the best people from the SWP, among whom
doubtless Kirk and Kaye were high on the list, and breaking party
discipline was unnecessary, since it wasn't a full-blown reformist
party at that point, as well as highly counterproductive.
-jh-
| Quote: | Precisely because the Majority was not just another faction
(a point Dobbs was careful to insist upon), it had a duty to
seek all-around political *clarity* in the forthcoming split.
The Majority naturally should have chosen its own time and
its own terrain for that inevitable fight. It chose wrongly, as
a matter of bureaucratic reflex, for the interests of *all* parties
to the dispute .. even ("especially," for Dobbs) themselves.
You might rightly say that centrists *cannot* achieve
political clarity, nor even chase it very far ..
.. which is only to say that Dobbs had no capacity to be
politically right.
- David Stevens
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John Holmes
Guest
|
| Posted: Tue Aug 26, 2008 1:31 pm Post subject: Re: Cynthia McKinney - 9/11 Truthist? |
|
|
On Tue, 26 Aug 2008, David Stevens wrote:
| Quote: | "stephen" <srdiamond@gmail.com> replied:
+
+> years ago, Gore Vidal appeared to be considering a
+> run for US Senator of California, as a Democrat. (In the
+> event, he didn't run).
+
+> The Spartacist League/US mooted the idea of endorsing
+> Vidal. (In the event, they didn't either).
+
+> I thought the Spartacists made a good case (if not a
+> correct one).
Do you know if the IBT or the IG commented?
correction: Vidal *did* run [in 1982]. The Spartacists did not
endorse him. The proto-BT was only formed that October (as an "external
tendency of the SL"); the proto-IG was not expelled until 1996.
Vidal lost the Demo primary to Jerry Brown (who lost
in November 1982 to Republican Pete Wilson).
Vidal had been a luminary in the 1970s "Peoples" Party,
an ephemeral national party with which the "Peace and Freedom Party" of
CPUSA's Herbert Apetheker and baby doctor Benjamin Spock were associated.
A 1983 documentary, _Gore Vidal: The Man Who Said NO_, details Vidal's 1982
run for Senate. A
QuickTime-format video clip is online at:
http://garyconklinfilms.com/GoreVidal.html
"There is only one party in the United States, the Property Party...and it
has two right wings: Republican and Democrat. Republicans are a bit stupider,
more rigid, more doctrinaire in their laissez-faire capitalism than the
Democrats, who are cuter, prettier, a bit more corrupt-until recently... and
more willing than the Republicans to make small adjustments when the poor,
the black, the anti-imperialists get out of hand. But, essentially, there is
no difference between the two parties." --
Gore Vidal [*]
|
That does sound rather better than anything I can imagine McKinney or
Sheehan saying. Still, the Democratic primary is the Democratic
primary.
| Quote: |
In remembrance of 1968 (when I was a liberal),
I'm happy to report that Vidal had the final words in his decades-long feud
with William F. Buckley, Jr.
(They were "Rest In Hell," somewhat elaborated).
+> Yet hundreds of Marcus Garvey clubs sprung up, propelling
+> blacks into political life in a way that they hadn't been before.
+> Few of those Negroes had any more intention of "returning"
+> to Africa than Garvey himself; rather, the movement outgrew
+> and ignored its formal programmatic bounds.
+
+> That's dialectics.
Can you spell out what makes this development or this account
dialectical?
Although I intended that as a punchline, I had in mind the transformations
from quantity into quality.
I also meant the Garvey example as something of a shocker --
"admittedly extreme," I'd warned the few Trots in our audience.
I haven' followed Kirk-Kaye, but I recall superficially looking at
them in 1965-1966, when I explored parties holding lines consistent
with my confused Maoist/Trotskyist consciousness. They and another
tendency--or perhaps the same one (Swabeck tendency) was quasi-Maoist.
Yes: Arne Swabeck was SWP/US' longtime resident Mao-oid opposition.
He was expelled with Kirk-Kaye, and parted their company later on.
I preferred the outright Maoist Marcyites at the time. I wonder if
Kirk-Kaye's Maoist proclivities carried over to the FSP.
Yes, to some extent. The programmatic basis is apparent in: Clara Fraser and
Richard Fraser, _Crisis and Leadership_,
(Red Letter Press, 2000) US$13.95, 192 pp. pbk., ISBN 0-932323-08-1.
What became FSP did not enthuse over the Great Proletarian
Cultural Revolution like Workers League did. (*That* offered Spartacist
grounds for a break with ICFI that didn't involve Cuba, which Robertson had
declared in IC discussions not to matter very much).
|
Or rather, that the programmatic position of the IC on Cuba basically
didn't quite square with their theoretical position. Insofar as they
had one, it was sort of OK, defend Cuba, for workers democracy.
With retrospect of 40 years, supporting or not supporting the GPCR
certainly looks like a rather important question, there are rather a
lot of people in China, and the GPCR in retrospect seems to have more
resemblance to 1937 in the Soviet Union than say 1968 in Berkeley,
which is what some people at the time seemed to think.
| Quote: | FSP's current position on China: Dr. Susan Williams, _Capitalism's Brutal
Comeback in China_,
(Red Letter Press, 2003) US $4.50, 56 pp. pbk,
ISBN 0-932323-20-0.
Despite the title, they don't say that capitalism *made* its comeback in
China (only that it voraciously *is* making it).
Williams documents a vigorous workingclass resistance.
Her book is a good source of arguments against the view that capitalism has
been restored.
My own take: the FSP never considered Mao to be a generic
national stalinist, as I do. (Clara Fraser, even in the 1990s,
explicitly continued to regard Tito as the "unconscious Trotskyist"
she thought him in the 1950s, with all relevant implications for her line on
Cuba anytime after 1959).
|
Um, how did that impact her understanding of then-current unpleasant
events in the former Yugoslavia? If that's "unconscious Trotskyism" in
action, thanks but no thanks.
| Quote: | I think FSP might not even take offense if I say also that they were better
Mandelites than Mandel was.
Richard Fraser ended up in the Democratic Party via DSOC through the nammies
(New American Movement). I honor him
as a theorist of revolutionary integrationism, however.
For Holmes to preen his ignorance on Kirk-Kaye means, in
large measure, that he spits on the Spartacist heritage too.
|
Yawn. Whatever. I don't think whatever exact tactical ploys Kirk and
Kaye were up to circa 1964 or 1965 or 1966 in the SWP is part of some
Revolutionary Heritage that has to be Upheld.
| Quote: |
(Not that FSP would agree with *that*).
Well, let's get back to the initial point you raise. Might it have been a
good idea to support Vidal, running as a Democrat. Or does running as a
Green make McKinney unsupportable. Frankly, I would have answered with an
automatic no to both, but I do have the sense that my position might be
doctrinaire.
Yabbut, for some erstwhile comrades, a little Second International
maximalism might offer a healthy medicine. Old August Bebel seems
awfully advanced in the wake of what the IG calls "the massive
Red shift to the right" since 1989-1991.
That said, I am merely a whore commanding a higher price. Put me on
Gilligan's Island, give me the only vote in the world to choose between
Hitler on one hand and Ron Paul or Cynthia McKinney on the other, then see
how quickly I maybe make a giant upsucking sound.
The question is, if the goal of electoral work is advancing the working
class toward political independence, how can it be accomplished from within
a bourgeois party?
The general case, naturally, is that it can't. (And I include all parties
of the petty bourgeoisie: pink, Green, and brown).
David Walters implies that the McKinney campaign might escape
this criticism, because the McKinney campaign is not a campaign *for*
the Greens, but isn't the struggle for class independence predicated
on the concept that classes express themselves politically through
parties. If the party question becomes secondary, isn't that itself a
major obstacle to political independence?
Proyect, and others, would argue that breaking the stranglehold
of the de facto (and increasingly, de jure) US two party system
would remove a preliminary obstacle to a class party.
I find it a sort of nonspontaneous confabulation to perceive
any favorable social-political terrain for that.
If some Unicorn of a conjuncture should appear, I also think
it no less likely to spring from a Libertarian direction as from
the Greens or the pinks.
A.G. Philbin posted [17 December 2007] about Ron Paul's
campaign as Libertarian (while continuing to represent about
twenty-two Texas counties as a Republican Congressman).
I disagree with Philbin as to the current imperial wars being
"the" overriding concern, for a reason *similar* to yours:
+ Meaningful action ... is whatever increases the confidence, + the
autonomy, the initiative, the participation, the solidarity,
+ the equalitarian tendencies and the self -activity of the masses + and
whatever assists in their demystification.
I will allow, hypothetically, that meaningful activity might
occur absent a Party. (Not much, nor for long).
Surely, Ron Paul is no "worse" than Cynthia McKinney.
He is not trying to feed the Leviathan. (Nor, unlike the
well-meaning McKinney, is he likely to do so by accident
or ignorance of what state power is about).
|
Last I heard, he was planning to vote for the candidate of his party,
which seems to be likely to be McCain, not him.
-jh-
| Quote: |
Ron Paul's virtues and vices are those of a *consistent*
Libertarian. He's not one of those fellows who expects
to reign in the Police State without reigning in the Military-Industrial
complex. He opposes US imperialism,
but only in the name of US "national sovereignty." Paul's
program -- like the 1976 electoral campaign of SWP/US --
regards imperialism as something which can be legislated away, rather than an
inherent feature of modern capitalism.
Ultimately, he is a crank who likes Ayn Rand.
The Good: In addition to opposing the Iraq War, Ron Paul advocates US
withdrawal from NATO and removing US troops
from foreign soil; calls for an end to the four-decade long
War on Drugs; opposed the USA PATRIOT Act and No Child Left Behind; and is an
adamant opponent of gun control.
The Bad: Dr. Paul (he's an Ob/Gyn, as is one of his daughters)
has introduced legislation to circumvent Roe v. Wade. He favors abolition of
the Federal Income Tax (and most Federal agencies).
He voted to invade Afghanistan, notwithstanding his chronic
"Troops Out of Everywhere" position.
The Weird: Ron Paul might be the last "hard money" guy ever
seen in bourgeois politics. (He wants to repeal the 1913
Federal Reserve Act). Paul doesn't regard the United Nations
as a den of thieves, any more than the pissles of Gloria La Riva's party..
but he does advocate US withdrawal from the UN, the better to protect USA
"national sovereignty" from the
likes of UNESCO and Trick-or-Treat-for-UNICEF.
The Utterly Consistent: Unlike those Libertarians who call for abolishing the
welfare state even as they suck from its sagging teats, Paul paid for his own
children's college and postgraduate work (rather than allow them to accept
Federal loans or other aid). Uniquely among politicos, he refuses to accept
a Congressional pension. As the only Ob/Gyn in a rural Texas county, Dr.
Paul refused to accept Medicare or Medicaid payments .. but delivered babies
_pro bono_
for women unable to pay. Despite a district on the coast
of the Gulf of Mexico, he opposes Federal flood insurance,
even, because it is governmentally subsidized (and doesn't
offer a choice of carriers to his classless "consumers").
No, I am not going to vote for the fellow.
But I judge his prospects for a socialist epiphany as being
every bit as good as McKinney's.
Prince Kropotkin said: All dog's chillums got somethin' to offer.
- David Stevens
[*] Gore Vidal, _Matters of Fact and of Fiction: Essays 1973-1976_ (Random
House, 1977),
ISBN 0-3944-1128-5, p. 268.
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stephen
Guest
|
| Posted: Tue Aug 26, 2008 3:03 pm Post subject: Re: Cynthia McKinney - 9/11 Truthist? |
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On Aug 26, 1:02 am, John Holmes <jhol...@OCF.Berkeley.EDU> wrote:
| Quote: |
I have no objection whatsoever to being called a moralist.
|
That's because you surely are no Leninist.
But here
| Quote: | moralism is misplaced to say the least. Something Trotsky, Lenin and
Luxemburg all understood very well, whatever their occasional
differences, was that upholding the discipline of a revolutionary
party is a good thing, and of a non-revolutionary party ... a bad
thing.
You are indeed turning "upholding the discipline of a non- |
revolutionary party" into a (negative) moral absolute.
| Quote: |
But a certain complexity might upset this diagnosis. Wohlforth could not
have defended a violation of discipline based on the non-revolutionary
character of the SWP, because he believed the SWP remained
revolutionary, before and immediately after the Robertsonite
expulsion.
I agree with your *logic*; but insist that my own reference to
discipline of "those inside SWP/US" applied in context only to
the Kirk-Kaye tendency.
Whether or not Wohlforth or Kirk or Kaye happened to *think* the
SWP was a revolutionary party is quite irrelevant, since it wasn't.
|
Only to a moralist, like you, who sees "non-revolutionary" as
equivalent to "Satanic." The "relevance" is that if Wohlforth broke
discipline while claiming the SWP was revolutionary--hence misled
other militants about his intentions--defending him could have been
tantamount to defending his dishonest practices. But the Robertsonites
during this period were covering up Healy's political banditry. The
attempted fusion with the "bandits" remained in the future.
srd |
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stephen
Guest
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| Posted: Tue Aug 26, 2008 7:29 pm Post subject: Re: the McKinney Campaign was: Cynthia McKinney - 9/11 Truth |
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|
On Aug 25, 11:30 am, John Holmes <jhol...@OCF.Berkeley.EDU> wrote:
| Quote: | Joe Hansen I recall thought Fidel was an "unconscious Trotskyist." Is
this your attitude toward Sheehan & McKinney?
|
Must be, since McKinney and Sheehan are endorsed based on their
extrapolated political trajectory.
srd |
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stephen
Guest
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| Posted: Tue Aug 26, 2008 7:39 pm Post subject: Re: Cynthia McKinney - 9/11 Truthist? |
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On Aug 25, 4:08 pm, John Holmes <jhol...@OCF.Berkeley.EDU> wrote:
| Quote: | Sheehan is angry about her son, and McKinney about how her fellow
Demos set her up as a media victim. Debs led thousands of railworkers
in armed confrontation with the government. And saw thousands of his
members being given the kind of treatment the Black Panthers got from
COINTELPRO. Not the same thing.
|
I have never been impressed with Sheehan, a histrionic personality.
Hearing an echo of my long-abandoned moralism, I think, what kind of
chauvinist household did Sheehan create to send her son voluntarily to
die in Iraq for imperialism. How nice to unload her probably well-
deserved personal guilt to the Bush regime.
Sheehan's mentality is such as gravitates to 9/11 truth, not
socialism.
Just a somewhat irrelevant, moralistically tainted, opinion.
srd |
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stephen
Guest
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| Posted: Tue Aug 26, 2008 7:42 pm Post subject: Re: the McKinney Campaign was: Cynthia McKinney - 9/11 Truth |
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On Aug 25, 4:14 pm, ross <nob...@nowhere.net> wrote:
| Quote: | Myu future outside-the-country interventions in these campaigns will be
explicitly aimed at bringing the militants supporting these campaigns to
the realisation that they need to build a labor party, as soon as I can
figure out how to do that.
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In the mean time, I'll cheerlead your cheerleading.
srd |
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David Stevens
Guest
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| Posted: Tue Aug 26, 2008 7:59 pm Post subject: Re: Cynthia McKinney - 9/11 Truthist? |
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John Holmes replied to me:
| Quote: |
(Clara Fraser, even in the 1990s,
explicitly continued to regard Tito as the "unconscious Trotskyist"
she thought him in the 1950s, with all relevant implications for her line
on Cuba anytime after 1959).
Um, how did that impact her understanding of then-current unpleasant
events in the former Yugoslavia? If that's "unconscious Trotskyism" in
action, thanks but no thanks.
|
By then, Tito was dead -- very highly unconscious.
Fraser's editorial was rather a nostalgic retrospective:
()
() [Fidel Castro's] was the message a de facto Trotskyist, whether
() he knew it or not. I was (and am) an adherent of Leon Trotsky's
() pro-Lenin, anti-Stalin ideology. Castro's words starkly illumined
() the Trotskyist concept of Permanent Revolution - the chain
() reaction between advanced and colonial countries - like nothing
() I had experienced since, after breaking with Stalin, Tito sent a
() freighter to New York to bring hundreds of sympathizers to
() Yugoslavia to join labor brigades. I was all set to be part of that
() adventure when the hateful State Department refused to let anyone
() board the ship.
-- Clara Fraser, "Make it one Cuba Libre, please" [December 1997]
http://www.socialism.com/fsarticles/vol18no3/183CFcol.html
| Quote: | I think FSP might not even take offense if I say also that they were
better Mandelites than Mandel was.
Richard Fraser ended up in the Democratic Party via DSOC
|
There, I slipped up: DSA, rather than DSOC, I think.
["Democratic Socialists of America," not "Democratic Socialist
Organizing Committee].
operative root = "Democrat," in any event.
| Quote: | Last I heard, [Ron Paul] was planning to vote for the candidate of his
party, which seems to be likely to be McCain, not him.
|
Everybody got one, everybody got one,
Doctor Paul got two (oooh).
Parties, I mean.
For one of them, Ron Paul will appear on California's Presidential ballot
with a whole slate of tax-hatin' electors.
- David Stevens |
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nada
Guest
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| Posted: Tue Aug 26, 2008 10:24 pm Post subject: Re: Cynthia McKinney - 9/11 Truthist? |
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On Aug 26, 12:39 pm, stephen <srdiam...@gmail.com> wrote:
| Quote: | I have never been impressed with Sheehan, a histrionic personality.
Hearing an echo of my long-abandoned moralism, I think, what kind of
chauvinist household did Sheehan create to send her son voluntarily to
die in Iraq for imperialism. How nice to unload her probably well-
deserved personal guilt to the Bush regime.
|
I think you need to get out more SRD. Seriously to even poise this
question.
| Quote: |
Sheehan's mentality is such as gravitates to 9/11 truth, not
socialism.
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Evidently you haven't read her program.
| Quote: | Just a somewhat irrelevant, moralistically tainted, opinion.
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Yeah, we don't want that do we? We need more David Stevens...
David |
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stephen
Guest
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| Posted: Tue Aug 26, 2008 10:49 pm Post subject: Re: Cynthia McKinney - 9/11 Truthist? |
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On Aug 26, 12:41 am, "David Stevens" <passchenda...@ymail.com> wrote:
| Quote: | "stephen" <srdiam...@gmail.com> replied:
+
+> years ago, Gore Vidal appeared to be considering a
+> run for US Senator of California, as a Democrat. (In the
+> event, he didn't run).
|
The full first sentence is:
| Quote: | Several years ago, Gore Vidal appeared to be considering a run for US Senator
of California, as a Democrat. (In the event, he didn't run).
|
This is why I thought the IG or IBT might have commented.
| Quote: | +
+> The Spartacist League/US mooted the idea of endorsing
+> Vidal. (In the event, they didn't either).
+
+> I thought the Spartacists made a good case (if not a
+> correct one).
Do you know if the IBT or the IG commented?
correction: Vidal *did* run [in 1982]. The Spartacists did not
endorse him. The proto-BT was only formed that October
(as an "external tendency of the SL"); the proto-IG was not
expelled until 1996.
Vidal lost the Demo primary to Jerry Brown (who lost
in November 1982 to Republican Pete Wilson).
Vidal had been a luminary in the 1970s "Peoples" Party,
an ephemeral national party with which the "Peace
and Freedom Party" of CPUSA's Herbert Apetheker
and baby doctor Benjamin Spock were associated.
A 1983 documentary, _Gore Vidal: The Man Who
Said NO_, details Vidal's 1982 run for Senate. A
QuickTime-format video clip is online at:
http://garyconklinfilms.com/GoreVidal.html
"There is only one party in the United States,
the Property Party...and it has two right wings:
Republican and Democrat. Republicans are a bit
stupider, more rigid, more doctrinaire in their
laissez-faire capitalism than the Democrats, who
are cuter, prettier, a bit more corrupt-until
recently... and more willing than the Republicans
to make small adjustments when the poor, the black,
the anti-imperialists get out of hand. But,
essentially, there is no difference between the
two parties."
-- Gore Vidal [*]
In remembrance of 1968 (when I was a liberal),
I'm happy to report that Vidal had the final words
in his decades-long feud with William F. Buckley, Jr.
(They were "Rest In Hell," somewhat elaborated).
+> Yet hundreds of Marcus Garvey clubs sprung up, propelling
+> blacks into political life in a way that they hadn't been before.
+> Few of those Negroes had any more intention of "returning"
+> to Africa than Garvey himself; rather, the movement outgrew
+> and ignored its formal programmatic bounds.
+
+> That's dialectics.
Can you spell out what makes this development or this
account dialectical?
Although I intended that as a punchline, I had in mind the
transformations from quantity into quality.
|
I would have thought the interpenetration of opposites. Either, I
guess, could apply. I just want to call attention to the fact, which
you would probably acknowledge, that pointing out how the account
conforms to dialectics is NOT an argument in its favor. (More
controversially, I think it an argument AGAINST the position.
Dialectical arguments are those shown by dialectics to survive
superficial rejection, yet they remain prima facie implausible.)
| Quote: |
I also meant the Garvey example as something of a shocker --
"admittedly extreme," I'd warned the few Trots in our audience.
I haven' followed Kirk-Kaye, but I recall superficially looking at
them in 1965-1966, when I explored parties holding lines consistent
with my confused Maoist/Trotskyist consciousness. They and another
tendency--or perhaps the same one (Swabeck tendency) was quasi-Maoist.
Yes: Arne Swabeck was SWP/US' longtime resident Mao-oid opposition.
He was expelled with Kirk-Kaye, and parted their company later on.
I preferred the outright Maoist Marcyites at the time. I wonder if
Kirk-Kaye's Maoist proclivities carried over to the FSP.
Yes, to some extent. The programmatic basis is apparent in:
Clara Fraser and Richard Fraser, _Crisis and Leadership_,
(Red Letter Press, 2000) US$13.95, 192 pp. pbk.,
ISBN 0-932323-08-1.
What became FSP did not enthuse over the Great Proletarian
Cultural Revolution like Workers League did. (*That* offered
Spartacist grounds for a break with ICFI that didn't involve Cuba,
which Robertson had declared in IC discussions not to matter
very much).
|
This preceded my association with WL, but from what I recall in
reviewing the position, the enthusiasm distinguished the GPCR from the
Red Guard movement, the latter afforded conditional support. I think
they would have termed the excesses of the GPCR as part of the left-
faction of the bureaucracy's effort to control the Red Guard's by
misdirection. As to the Red Guards becoming supportable, this would be
a matter of quantity changing to quality or of the interpenetration of
opposites. <g>
| Quote: |
FSP's current position on China:
Dr. Susan Williams, _Capitalism's Brutal Comeback in China_,
(Red Letter Press, 2003) US $4.50, 56 pp. pbk,
ISBN 0-932323-20-0.
Despite the title, they don't say that capitalism *made* its
comeback in China (only that it voraciously *is* making it).
Williams documents a vigorous workingclass resistance.
Her book is a good source of arguments against the
view that capitalism has been restored.
My own take: the FSP never considered Mao to be a generic
national stalinist, as I do. (Clara Fraser, even in the 1990s,
explicitly continued to regard Tito as the "unconscious Trotskyist"
she thought him in the 1950s, with all relevant implications for
her line on Cuba anytime after 1959).
I think FSP might not even take offense if I say also that
they were better Mandelites than Mandel was.
Richard Fraser ended up in the Democratic Party via DSOC
through the nammies (New American Movement). I honor him
as a theorist of revolutionary integrationism, however.
For Holmes to preen his ignorance on Kirk-Kaye means, in
large measure, that he spits on the Spartacist heritage too.
|
Does he? If so, that's disappointing, frustrating using Holmes as a
poster boy for the icl.
| Quote: |
(Not that FSP would agree with *that*).
Well, let's get back to the initial point you raise. Might it
have been a good idea to support Vidal, running as a Democrat.
Or does running as a Green make McKinney unsupportable.
Frankly, I would have answered with an automatic no to both,
but I do have the sense that my position might be doctrinaire.
Yabbut, for some erstwhile comrades, a little Second International
maximalism might offer a healthy medicine. Old August Bebel seems
awfully advanced in the wake of what the IG calls "the massive
Red shift to the right" since 1989-1991.
That said, I am merely a whore commanding a higher price.
Put me on Gilligan's Island, give me the only vote in the world
to choose between Hitler on one hand and Ron Paul or Cynthia
McKinney on the other, then see how quickly I maybe make
a giant upsucking sound.
The question is, if the goal of electoral work is advancing the working
class toward political independence, how can it be accomplished from
within a bourgeois party?
The general case, naturally, is that it can't. (And I include all parties
of the petty bourgeoisie: pink, Green, and brown).
David Walters implies that the McKinney campaign might escape
this criticism, because the McKinney campaign is not a campaign *for*
the Greens, but isn't the struggle for class independence predicated
on the concept that classes express themselves politically through
parties. If the party question becomes secondary, isn't that itself a
major obstacle to political independence?
Proyect, and others, would argue that breaking the stranglehold
of the de facto (and increasingly, de jure) US two party system
would remove a preliminary obstacle to a class party.
|
With such argument, one could as easily say that an Obama win would
advance the cause of a black party, by denting the racism on which the
two-party monopoly rests. This is simply rank Opportunism, founded, of
course, on American pragmatism. Or maybe in the end it is mysticism: a
belief one can one-up Marxist theory by applying naive political
intuition.
| Quote: |
I find it a sort of nonspontaneous confabulation to perceive
any favorable social-political terrain for that.
If some Unicorn of a conjuncture should appear, I also think
it no less likely to spring from a Libertarian direction as from
the Greens or the pinks.
|
<deleted paragraphs below mostly concern the Ron Paul candidacy.
srd |
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John Holmes
Guest
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| Posted: Wed Aug 27, 2008 12:29 am Post subject: Re: Cynthia McKinney - 9/11 Truthist? |
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On Tue, 26 Aug 2008, David Stevens wrote:
| Quote: | John Holmes replied to me:
(Clara Fraser, even in the 1990s,
explicitly continued to regard Tito as the "unconscious Trotskyist"
she thought him in the 1950s, with all relevant implications for her line
on Cuba anytime after 1959).
Um, how did that impact her understanding of then-current unpleasant
events in the former Yugoslavia? If that's "unconscious Trotskyism" in
action, thanks but no thanks.
By then, Tito was dead -- very highly unconscious.
|
Indeed. But he had rather a lot of influence in Yugoslavia, and surely
his policies had something to do with what happened after he died.
I am curious as to the FSP's attitude to the Yugoslav wars, if you
happen to remember what it was.
| Quote: |
Fraser's editorial was rather a nostalgic retrospective:
()
() [Fidel Castro's] was the message a de facto Trotskyist, whether
() he knew it or not. I was (and am) an adherent of Leon Trotsky's
() pro-Lenin, anti-Stalin ideology. Castro's words starkly illumined
() the Trotskyist concept of Permanent Revolution - the chain
() reaction between advanced and colonial countries - like nothing
() I had experienced since, after breaking with Stalin, Tito sent a
() freighter to New York to bring hundreds of sympathizers to
() Yugoslavia to join labor brigades. I was all set to be part of that
() adventure when the hateful State Department refused to let anyone
() board the ship.
-- Clara Fraser, "Make it one Cuba Libre, please" [December 1997]
http://www.socialism.com/fsarticles/vol18no3/183CFcol.html
I think FSP might not even take offense if I say also that they were
better Mandelites than Mandel was.
Richard Fraser ended up in the Democratic Party via DSOC
There, I slipped up: DSA, rather than DSOC, I think.
["Democratic Socialists of America," not "Democratic Socialist
Organizing Committee].
operative root = "Democrat," in any event.
|
I do remember from my rather-long-ago-at-this-point reading of the
Prometheus bulletin that they said that, more or less on his
deathbed, he had quit DSA and became an honorary member or something
like that of the SL. If you've read it more recently, by all means add
any appropriate correctives.
| Quote: |
Last I heard, [Ron Paul] was planning to vote for the candidate of his
party, which seems to be likely to be McCain, not him.
Everybody got one, everybody got one,
Doctor Paul got two (oooh).
Parties, I mean.
For one of them, Ron Paul will appear on California's Presidential ballot
with a whole slate of tax-hatin' electors.
|
The Libertarians are running a rather unpleasant right-wing Republican
named Barr. Which is Paul's ticket? The leftovers of George Wallace's
AIP apes? Or some last fragment of the Ross Perot party?
I suppose he's been given permission to do this, since everybody knows
that Obama is going to win California anyway, so this is harmless from
the Republican POV.
-jh-
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nada
Guest
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| Posted: Wed Aug 27, 2008 2:09 am Post subject: Re: Cynthia McKinney - 9/11 Truthist? |
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On Aug 26, 5:55 pm, "David Stevens" <passchenda...@ymail.com> wrote:
| Quote: | On my Ron Paul rant, John Holmes caught me without my pants on:
By then, Tito was dead -- very highly unconscious.
Indeed. But he had rather a lot of influence in Yugoslavia, and surely his
policies had something to do with what happened after he died.
I am curious as to the FSP's attitude to the Yugoslav wars, if you happen
to remember what it was.
(I don't think you will be hugely surprised; they're professed Mandelites
and multivanguardists, as you know).
I didn't remember specifics, so I cribbed from FSP's website:
"Stop the U.S. War Against Yugoslavia!
" ... Government spokespeople tell us that ancient ethnic rivalries are
to blame for the current war. But for 40 years after World War II,
the trend was toward increasing peace and harmony among the Serbs,
Croatians, Albanians and many other ethnic and national groups who
made up Yugoslavia.
"This was due to the institution after the war of a multicultural workers
state, founded by Josip Broz Tito and the Communist Party, leaders of
the resistance against Nazi occupation. Both political and economic
changes helped to unify Yugoslavia's various peoples.
"Using a kind of affirmative action [!! - DS], Tito ensured that all groups
were represented in government. Pressure from national minorities led to
successive constitutional changes giving the provinces more local
decision-making power; Kosovo gained autonomous status and
eventually its own constitution and governmental assembly.
"The new communist government also nationalized industry and took
measures to share wealth between the richer industrialized republics of
Croatia and Slovenia and the rest of the country, including agrarian
Kosovo, the poorest region.
"Although the Yugoslav workers state was run by a privileged Stalinist
bureaucracy, the degree of repression was much less than in the Soviet
Union, with which Tito severed relations in 1948. As a consequence
of its relatively progressive policies, Yugoslavia became one of the most
free, cultured, and prosperous countries in Eastern Europe."
[<--- huge snip --->]
"Stop the bombing now! No ground troops! Cut off funds for the war machine.
No U.S.-funded proxy war via the Kosova Liberation Army. No partition of
Kosovo.
"For a Balkan Workers Conference. Bring together representatives of trade
unions, national minorities, women's organizations, and peace groups to
negotiate a settlement guaranteeing the right of self-determination to the
Albanian Kosovars while protecting the rights of the Serbian minority
in Kosovo
"For a united federation of Balkan republics based on socialist democracy
and equality among nations.
"For international solidarity and respect among workers of all countries,
nations, and races!"
-- "Stop the U.S. War Against Yugoslavia!" [May 1999]
http://www.socialism.com/currents/stop.htm
On revolutionary integrationist Richard Fraser (Kirk):
I do remember from my rather-long-ago-at-this-point reading of the
Prometheus bulletin that they said that, more or less on his deathbed, he
had quit DSA and became an honorary member or something like that of the
SL. If you've read it more recently, by all means add any appropriate
correctives.
He had not quit, although the Spartacists were right to maintain hope
for his political soul. Fraser wrote a protest letter against one of
Clinton's bombings. His last political act was to endorse a PDC
demonstration. [Springfield, Illinois, perhaps?]
The Spartacists treated him better than any of his then- (or former)
comrades did. I think they helped to replace his library, and gave him
important emotional and physical support during his final days.
I must have suffered a stroke (or massive brain flatulance) to write:
For one of them, Ron Paul will appear on California's Presidential ballot
with a whole slate of tax-hatin' electors.
The Libertarians are running a rather unpleasant right-wing Republican
named Barr. Which is Paul's ticket? The leftovers of George Wallace's AIP
apes? Or some last fragment of the Ross Perot party?
Ouch. I was wrong. Paul is not a candidate.
And you are right about Barr, whose belief in "The Constitution" apparently
does not even extend as far as its full faith and credit clause: Barr
supported the Federal "Defense of Marriage" Act.
California's Libertarian Party supported the Mark Leno legislation to give
equal rights to monogamous gays. More surprising to me, they supported
Cal. SB 1019, for public access to police misconduct records. They are
still a bunch of cranks, but they seem to have adapted locally.
They'll get my vote only after they rip the ballot from my cold dead hands.
- David Stevens
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That was interesting! I'm beginning to warm up to David's writing
style.
David |
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David Stevens
Guest
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| Posted: Wed Aug 27, 2008 5:55 am Post subject: Re: Cynthia McKinney - 9/11 Truthist? |
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On my Ron Paul rant, John Holmes caught me without my pants on:
| Quote: |
By then, Tito was dead -- very highly unconscious.
Indeed. But he had rather a lot of influence in Yugoslavia, and surely his
policies had something to do with what happened after he died.
I am curious as to the FSP's attitude to the Yugoslav wars, if you happen
to remember what it was.
|
(I don't think you will be hugely surprised; they're professed Mandelites
and multivanguardists, as you know).
I didn't remember specifics, so I cribbed from FSP's website:
"Stop the U.S. War Against Yugoslavia!
" ... Government spokespeople tell us that ancient ethnic rivalries are
to blame for the current war. But for 40 years after World War II,
the trend was toward increasing peace and harmony among the Serbs,
Croatians, Albanians and many other ethnic and national groups who
made up Yugoslavia.
"This was due to the institution after the war of a multicultural workers
state, founded by Josip Broz Tito and the Communist Party, leaders of
the resistance against Nazi occupation. Both political and economic
changes helped to unify Yugoslavia's various peoples.
"Using a kind of affirmative action [!! - DS], Tito ensured that all groups
were represented in government. Pressure from national minorities led to
successive constitutional changes giving the provinces more local
decision-making power; Kosovo gained autonomous status and
eventually its own constitution and governmental assembly.
"The new communist government also nationalized industry and took
measures to share wealth between the richer industrialized republics of
Croatia and Slovenia and the rest of the country, including agrarian
Kosovo, the poorest region.
"Although the Yugoslav workers state was run by a privileged Stalinist
bureaucracy, the degree of repression was much less than in the Soviet
Union, with which Tito severed relations in 1948. As a consequence
of its relatively progressive policies, Yugoslavia became one of the most
free, cultured, and prosperous countries in Eastern Europe."
[<--- huge snip --->]
"Stop the bombing now! No ground troops! Cut off funds for the war machine.
No U.S.-funded proxy war via the Kosova Liberation Army. No partition of
Kosovo.
"For a Balkan Workers Conference. Bring together representatives of trade
unions, national minorities, women's organizations, and peace groups to
negotiate a settlement guaranteeing the right of self-determination to the
Albanian Kosovars while protecting the rights of the Serbian minority
in Kosovo
"For a united federation of Balkan republics based on socialist democracy
and equality among nations.
"For international solidarity and respect among workers of all countries,
nations, and races!"
-- "Stop the U.S. War Against Yugoslavia!" [May 1999]
http://www.socialism.com/currents/stop.htm
On revolutionary integrationist Richard Fraser (Kirk):
| Quote: | I do remember from my rather-long-ago-at-this-point reading of the
Prometheus bulletin that they said that, more or less on his deathbed, he
had quit DSA and became an honorary member or something like that of the
SL. If you've read it more recently, by all means add any appropriate
correctives.
|
He had not quit, although the Spartacists were right to maintain hope
for his political soul. Fraser wrote a protest letter against one of
Clinton's bombings. His last political act was to endorse a PDC
demonstration. [Springfield, Illinois, perhaps?]
The Spartacists treated him better than any of his then- (or former)
comrades did. I think they helped to replace his library, and gave him
important emotional and physical support during his final days.
I must have suffered a stroke (or massive brain flatulance) to write:
| Quote: | For one of them, Ron Paul will appear on California's Presidential ballot
with a whole slate of tax-hatin' electors.
The Libertarians are running a rather unpleasant right-wing Republican
named Barr. Which is Paul's ticket? The leftovers of George Wallace's AIP
apes? Or some last fragment of the Ross Perot party?
|
Ouch. I was wrong. Paul is not a candidate.
And you are right about Barr, whose belief in "The Constitution" apparently
does not even extend as far as its full faith and credit clause: Barr
supported the Federal "Defense of Marriage" Act.
California's Libertarian Party supported the Mark Leno legislation to give
equal rights to monogamous gays. More surprising to me, they supported
Cal. SB 1019, for public access to police misconduct records. They are
still a bunch of cranks, but they seem to have adapted locally.
They'll get my vote only after they rip the ballot from my cold dead hands.
- David Stevens |
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John Holmes
Guest
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| Posted: Wed Aug 27, 2008 11:22 am Post subject: Re: Cynthia McKinney - 9/11 Truthist? |
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|
On Tue, 26 Aug 2008, David Stevens wrote:
....
| Quote: | By then, Tito was dead -- very highly unconscious.
Indeed. But he had rather a lot of influence in Yugoslavia, and surely his
policies had something to do with what happened after he died.
I am curious as to the FSP's attitude to the Yugoslav wars, if you happen
to remember what it was.
(I don't think you will be hugely surprised; they're professed Mandelites
and multivanguardists, as you know).
I didn't remember specifics, so I cribbed from FSP's website:
"Stop the U.S. War Against Yugoslavia!
" ... Government spokespeople tell us that ancient ethnic rivalries are
to blame for the current war. But for 40 years after World War II,
the trend was toward increasing peace and harmony among the Serbs,
Croatians, Albanians and many other ethnic and national groups who
made up Yugoslavia.
"This was due to the institution after the war of a multicultural workers
state, founded by Josip Broz Tito and the Communist Party, leaders of
the resistance against Nazi occupation. Both political and economic
changes helped to unify Yugoslavia's various peoples.
"Using a kind of affirmative action [!! - DS], Tito ensured that all groups
were represented in government. Pressure from national minorities led to
successive constitutional changes giving the provinces more local
decision-making power; Kosovo gained autonomous status and
eventually its own constitution and governmental assembly.
...
|
So apparently the late Tito was not merely an unconscious Trotskyist,
but an unconscious Clara Fraserist. The FSP is rather big on
affirmative action, isn't it?
-jh- |
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stephen
Guest
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| Posted: Wed Aug 27, 2008 11:29 am Post subject: Re: Cynthia McKinney - 9/11 Truthist? |
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On Aug 26, 11:22 pm, John Holmes <jhol...@OCF.Berkeley.EDU> wrote:
| Quote: | So apparently the *late* Tito...
|
Who is the *latter day* Tito? Or is it the *earlier* Tito?
srd |
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