Post by hows this on Dec 27, 2005 15:01:26 GMT -5
"Look, whats not hard for you can be an ass-kicking struggle for someone else. I don't know you or your life situation. I do, however, know Hunter students and their life situations quite well."
No. This is not a matter of micro-particularity.
Yes, it is true that oppressed people (and this is especially true of people at the edge of survival) have a much harder time throwing themselves into a political movement (or even finding the time to read) than people whose lives are not similarly "one long emergency." This is why students historically have been MORE inclined to initiate and popularize revolutionary movements first.
And yes it is true that students now generally (and not just at hunter) find them selves penned in by loans, the need to work, and their course loads. so that the idea of "taking up the burdens of the world" seems impossible, and life focuses on getting over (spontaneously).
But it is also true that people canbe trained to be paralyzed by that.
For example, if a political movement focuses itself (in an economist way) on the "felt needs of people" for their own demands (like reduced tuition, or whatever) -- if that takes center stage (for both the activists and the masses), then people on many levels are trained to see their own immediate and personal needs are paramont.
And so if you go to people (trained that way) and say "it is time for many of you to put aside your books, and your plans for career, for the next six months, ifnot forever, and dive into the needs of liberation for the people of the world...." people (and this then includes even some of the advanced) can find themselves saying "this wasn't what our movement has been aobut, it has been about us and our needs. How can you say us gong to school is not that important, when for years we have been puting that AT THE CENTER of our politics."
So if you train people in such politics (school not bombs, or coursesnot combat).... politics that essentially (and even carefully) doesnot transcend the "narrow horizon of bourgeois right" then this politics by its very nature goes against a communist approach.
Revolution involves sacrifice. It involves people putting away their personal careers, even "neglecting" their families. It involves understanding that the self, and its survival, is not the basis of political aciton (even the self writ large as a larger constituency or identity group.)
Revolution is not the self interest of the working people -- in some seamless way, where their immediate interests coincide with their historic interests.
So if you build a movement that with great tenderness (and even genuine caring for the masses and their conditions and their felt needs) is built around THEIR economic needs, their travails (here meant in the narrow sense) -- that movement does not then go on to take up the larger politics (and especially revolutionary politics).
That is the essense of the communist critique of economism.
The struggles and sentiments of the people have to be diverted. Spontaneously, politics based on "the narrow horizon of bourgeois right" (even when it is based on combating real oppression, poverty, mistreatment) will be bourgeois politics (i.e. it will not break out of the killing confines of accepting this system). And this is true even if you put a thin veneer of "revolutionary" talk on top of a political struggle that is organized along these lines.
To put it another way, the mass line is not a technique -- where you build politics based on what the people already understand. It is not a technique at all. And you can't apply the mass line if you are not communists, organized in a communist movement, taking as your goals communism. It is a method for leading, and leading the masses in the direction and for the goal of communist revolution (not osmething else)
To take the mass line OUT OF THIS COMMUNIST context just turns it into a gimmick for building some vague "mass movement" around whatever is bobbing on the surface of events. (and specifically it is a gimmick for rightism and tailism.).
And your (Maz's) comment neatly distills exactly what is wrong in this whole approach.
No. This is not a matter of micro-particularity.
Yes, it is true that oppressed people (and this is especially true of people at the edge of survival) have a much harder time throwing themselves into a political movement (or even finding the time to read) than people whose lives are not similarly "one long emergency." This is why students historically have been MORE inclined to initiate and popularize revolutionary movements first.
And yes it is true that students now generally (and not just at hunter) find them selves penned in by loans, the need to work, and their course loads. so that the idea of "taking up the burdens of the world" seems impossible, and life focuses on getting over (spontaneously).
But it is also true that people canbe trained to be paralyzed by that.
For example, if a political movement focuses itself (in an economist way) on the "felt needs of people" for their own demands (like reduced tuition, or whatever) -- if that takes center stage (for both the activists and the masses), then people on many levels are trained to see their own immediate and personal needs are paramont.
And so if you go to people (trained that way) and say "it is time for many of you to put aside your books, and your plans for career, for the next six months, ifnot forever, and dive into the needs of liberation for the people of the world...." people (and this then includes even some of the advanced) can find themselves saying "this wasn't what our movement has been aobut, it has been about us and our needs. How can you say us gong to school is not that important, when for years we have been puting that AT THE CENTER of our politics."
So if you train people in such politics (school not bombs, or coursesnot combat).... politics that essentially (and even carefully) doesnot transcend the "narrow horizon of bourgeois right" then this politics by its very nature goes against a communist approach.
Revolution involves sacrifice. It involves people putting away their personal careers, even "neglecting" their families. It involves understanding that the self, and its survival, is not the basis of political aciton (even the self writ large as a larger constituency or identity group.)
Revolution is not the self interest of the working people -- in some seamless way, where their immediate interests coincide with their historic interests.
So if you build a movement that with great tenderness (and even genuine caring for the masses and their conditions and their felt needs) is built around THEIR economic needs, their travails (here meant in the narrow sense) -- that movement does not then go on to take up the larger politics (and especially revolutionary politics).
That is the essense of the communist critique of economism.
The struggles and sentiments of the people have to be diverted. Spontaneously, politics based on "the narrow horizon of bourgeois right" (even when it is based on combating real oppression, poverty, mistreatment) will be bourgeois politics (i.e. it will not break out of the killing confines of accepting this system). And this is true even if you put a thin veneer of "revolutionary" talk on top of a political struggle that is organized along these lines.
To put it another way, the mass line is not a technique -- where you build politics based on what the people already understand. It is not a technique at all. And you can't apply the mass line if you are not communists, organized in a communist movement, taking as your goals communism. It is a method for leading, and leading the masses in the direction and for the goal of communist revolution (not osmething else)
To take the mass line OUT OF THIS COMMUNIST context just turns it into a gimmick for building some vague "mass movement" around whatever is bobbing on the surface of events. (and specifically it is a gimmick for rightism and tailism.).
And your (Maz's) comment neatly distills exactly what is wrong in this whole approach.