[Peace-discuss] Fw: [socialistdiscussion] the center of organization

[David Johnson]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: RSilver100 at aol.com 
To: socialistdiscussion at yahoogroups.com 
Sent: Saturday, December 11, 2010 6:34 PM
Subject: Re: [socialistdiscussion] the center of organization


  

All the contributions of the comrades tend in the same direction. Once again, years of theoretical speculation are being clarified and resolved in practice by historical events. 

In Britain, the new generation of youth have made up overnight for two decades of political stagnation. There are currently at least 30 occupations still continuing at educational establishments around the country. Students at the sixth-form college where I run a weekly activity (around the youth magazine CARBOLIC) are throwing themselves wholeheartedly into almost daily street demonstrations, learning overnight the role of the banks, the police, the media, the political parties, and the careerist bureaucrats at the head of their own National Union of Students. Even at the secondary school where I work full-time, students devised their own petition protesting at the scrapping of EMA, and within two days 500 had signed it. 

The sudden political awakening of the youth has changed things forever. It has real revolutionary significance. It is reminiscent of France in May 1968 - but these are not the relatively privileged students of 1968, whose radicalism had a certain romantic flavour. These are largely working-class youth from the lower depths of society. At this college, for instance (the biggest in the country), 70% of the students are dependent on EMA - which is only paid in full to students from households earning less than £20,800 a year. 

Spontaneous movements have grown up within days, improvising and multiplying at astronomic rates via the internet and mobile phones. The elder siblings and parents of this generation, facing redundancy, cuts in welfare and housing benefit, and repossession, will have no choice but to follow their example. The ponderous sluggish machinery of the national trade union bureaucracy will have no chance of leading this movement - let alone the stranded clique of ex-Blairite/Brownite MPs in parliament, who are still in a state of shock and grief at their brutal rejection by the ruling class as instruments of political rule.

Ad-hoc anti-cuts coalitions are springing up here and there, composed of local trade-union branches, campaigning activists, consumer groups, etc. As Julian says, potentially these could become incipient soviets. The trade union apparatus and the Labour Parties at local level will no doubt be swept into support alongside these local initiatives, but there is no sign that they could form the vanguard. Of course there will be lulls and setbacks and even periods of demoralisation, but surely we are seeing already a faint outline of what shape the movement is taking as it revives.

Roger Silverman    


In a message dated 11/12/2010 23:12:02 GMT Standard Time, brutalseang at gmail.com writes:
    

  The student movement in the bay area is still very decentralized and weak. Large numbers can be brought together for various protests or demonstrations, but with the exception of a few spectacular examples, the real class conscious and aggressive element is small. It is also unfortunately dominated by anarchists which more so take advantage of the masses of interested students as opposed to working to grow or maintain them.

  Every campus has different student groups at various levels of consciousness and strength but there hasn't been any real effort to organize a mass action committee, a massive student council, with which to help organize and develop the movement. The bay area is geographically very divided - with a giant body of water between East and West which makes Bay Area wide coordination even more crucial.

  There have been California-wide general assemblies, and these could possibly develop into something very interesting but (as far as I know, correct me someone if I am wrong) these meet very infrequently and I've only attended one, which was the assembly which called for last year's March 4th general strike and day of action. So for however much potential may be locked up in these CA general assemblies, they meet too infrequently and cover too large an area to be what we need. We need a bay area general assembly.


  On Sat, Dec 11, 2010 at 10:01 AM, Ed Bober <ed at edbober.plus.com> wrote:

      





    Sean



    Norfolk Coalition Against the Cuts is both a reflection of the new movement that is opening up and the result of pressure over a couple of years from within unions to get a more active, flexible campaigning stance. 



    NCAC’s authority comes from the unions that set it up. Its flexibility comes from its inclusion of numerous smaller community groups whose initiatives it supports. It has grown from within the struggle itself as new groups have affiliated. It embraces many strands of political opinion.



    It will not always grow from strength the strength. There are bound to be periods of setback and defeat. This is one of the reasons why the movement needs cadres, people who have a good understanding of Marxism, who can think creatively and can analyse new situations as they develop.



    The dilemma we face is how to develop cadres at the same time as work within this flood of new activity. The movement is being reborn through the anger and protest of students as young as 16. 



    It is especially encouraging that there are a number young people involved who are thirsting to learn more about Marxism. We have to find ways of combining the practical tasks of campaigning with the educational tasks, study of the classics of Marxism and study of contemporary political and economic developments. 



    We are experimenting with ways of organising all the time: trying to combine the two tasks. Have you faced a similar situation in California around the student movement? How did you tackle this problem?



    Ed





      ----- Original Message ----- 
      From: John Reimann 
      To: socialistdiscussion at yahoogroups.com 
      Sent: Saturday, December 11, 2010 2:20 PM
      Subject: Re: [socialistdiscussion] the center of organization


        
      I agree with Sean here. In fact, I would possibly go a bit further. I think that the focal point of the struggle will be in the streets and work places - mobilizations against the cuts themselves, rather than focus on changing the unions (or the Labour Party - or building a new such party). This doesn't mean that the unions or the LP will go untouched, but especially for the newer forces, this won't be their focus. In fact, from what I am reading, thois is already the case as far as the student movement is concerned. 

      John



      On Fri, Dec 10, 2010 at 10:22 AM, Sean Gallagher <brutalseang at gmail.com> wrote:

          

        There has been some debate before on this list over what organizations the new movement will rise into. I used to think that these struggles would have the effect of "recapturing" the leadership of the union, and that because the students have to link up with the wider working class, it's only natural that the labor unions would be the organizational center of this new movement. But the more I read about things like the Norwich community council against the cuts - and also go back and read about how the soviets arose in 1905, or the Seattle general strike of 1919, I am more convinced that the directing bodies of the struggle will develop much more organically and will inevitably first develop as very broad-based councils arising with some spontaneity from the struggle itself, and not through or from the already established unions or political parties. 

        The soviets had their origins in a strike committee established in St. Petersberg, they did not come out full blown as revolutionary attachments to the Bolsheviks or other socialist parties but on the contrary they were broad community wide councils, with the pragmatic task of directing the general strike at that moment and contained within them all sorts of political tendencies and even serious bourgeois influences.

        I am not saying things like the Norwich community council, or the Oscar Grant "Oakland Assembly", or any other like body, will inevitably with the right agitation develop into revolutionary bodies, but simply that I think these are the real focal point of the struggle.

        The fight against the union bureaucrats and opportunists will not develop the struggle - it is the other way around: the larger movement will influence the unions. 

        In the midst of a protest, a strike, a movement, democratic bodies to organize the fight arise organically fitted to that particular issue - not prefabricated revolutionary bodies. These are the future soviets. The unions will play a secondary role in the leadership of the worker's struggle and can only rise to the occasion with enormous outside pressure and the politicization of its rank-and-file by a wider movement.



      -- 
      "Poems don't belong to those who write them; they belong to those who need them" - from movie "Il Postino"
      Check out:
      http://www.iww.org/en/blog/1411
      http://worldwidesocialist.net/blog/











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