72 fahrenheidt and apocalyptic in the sun yesterday. My brother tried to get me to go see "metal ballet" with him, but I begged off and procrastinated at home instead. Spooky scratched me again, the schmuck. I listened to Mastodon's Blood Mountain in lieu of Metal Ballet, and also Joanna Newsom's Ys, which I liked more than I thought I would and more than The Milk-Eyed Mender or whatever the first album was called, although 16 minutes is probably too long for a song if your name is not Miles Davis or Cecil Taylor. That said, it's a shockingly good 16 minute long song, lyrically potent and melodically intriguing despite the fact that i could walk to the post office and back listening only to it. (Actually not true, because the post office is really pretty far from here, and I'd have to stand on line for an hour anyway.)
Alek has provided a visual aid for Walter 3000. It's awesome.
I intended a substantial entry but I've lost the interest, so here's some C.L.R. James:
We say, number one, that the Negro struggle, the independent Negro struggle, has a vitality and a validity of its own; that it has deep historic roots in the past of America and in present struggles; it has an organic political perspective, along which it is travelling, to one degree or another, and everything shows that at the present time it is travelling with great speed and vigour.
We say, number two, that this independent Negro movement is able to intervene with terrific force upon the general social and political life of the nation, despite the fact that it is waged under the banner of democratic rights, and is not led necessarily either by the organised labour movement or the Marxist party.
We say, number three, and this is the most important, that it is able to exercise a powerful influence upon the revolutionary proletariat, that it has got a great contribution to make to the development of the proletariat in the United States, and that it is in itself a constituent part of the struggle for socialism.
In this way we challenge directly any attempt to subordinate or to push to the rear the social and political significance of the independent Negro struggle for democratic rights. That is our position. It was the position of Lenin thirty years ago. It was the position of Trotsky which he fought for during many years. It has been concretised by the general class struggle in the United States, and the tremendous struggles of the Negro people. It has been sharpened and refined by political controversy in our movement, and best of all it has had the benefit of three or four years of practical application in the Negro struggle and in the class struggle by the Socialist Workers’ Party during the past few years.
Shame what happened to the SWP as it became a cult of Jack Barnes in the 70s. By the early 80s casting out members who dare questioned the leadership as the party moved away from its principles. Dangers of a party in the name of the working class led by an educated professional class instead of the proletariat itself.
ReplyDeleteJames broke with the SWP about a year after writing this, primarily due to their eurocentrism. I've never had much use for Trotskyism, personally, or for Trotskyists not named C.L.R. James. Indeed, I'm skeptical of any "party" formation that is not configured around one vanguardist formation or another, though the involvement of intellectuals as intellectuals in political movements isn't necessarily reactionary. What's useful for me here is the insistence James makes of the autonomy of black struggle and the centrality of autonomous anti-imperialist and antiracist struggles to any radical socialist (or anarchist) project.
ReplyDeleteAgreed. Though it was impressive what the SWP did during the 60s, taking a central role in the anti-war movement in the US, its conversations with Malcolm X (very much in keeping with the the speech you quote of James. Its members were also active in the Women's movement. Its implosion were predictable for the very reasons you are skeptical of them. What is worrisome is the number of people who have taken on the Trotskyist strategies without the political viewpoint behind it (NeoCons to name one example). I tend to be skeptical of all who claim any sort of vanguard belief of themselves and their organization.
ReplyDeleteAck I mean "skeptical that any party formation IS not configured...)" (And I'm skeptical of the ones that are.) For what it's worth, i think the assertion that the SWP was at the center of the antiwar movement in the 60s is open to debate. Mao and Lenin were far more important to the New Left and its antecedents than Trotsky, not only to the PLP, but the Revolutionary Action Movement, the Bay Area Revolutionary Union - which lays the groundwork for "Chairman Bob" Avakian's Revolutionary Communist Party, the Black Panther Party for Self Defense (duh), the RYM and RYM II factions of SDS (The Weather Underground and the New Communist Movement,) and many Trotskyist figures in Europe (like Tariq Ali) were deeply critical of the US SWP as an institution. So did Trotskyist sects flourish during the late 60's? Yes. Can we argue that they played a central role in the antiwar movement? That strikes me as less clear.
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