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The
broad outlines of Socialist Action's views on the centrality of mass
mobilizations in building an irresistible antiwar movement have been
published in previous issues of this newspaper (see Jeff Mackler's article in our November 2007
issue). But some additional elaboration can be
helpful at a time when activists are today discussing concrete measures
to overcome the present impasse.
We've
alluded in the accompanying article (“U.S. Antiwar Movement Falters”)
to the main motivation for the liberal wing of the movement—i.e., its
allegiance or orientation to the "lesser evil" Democratic
Party as a vehicle for ending the war. But it's worth noting that this
is a double-sided phenomenon:
On
the one hand, it means discouraging mass action in election years. But
on the other, in order to serve as an effective force for the
Democratic Party within the movement, groups like UFPJ must maintain
their credibility by trying to appear in non-election years as the best
and most democratic builders of mass actions.
Once
the 2004 elections had ended, UFPJ reasserted its role in calling and
organizing mass actions. And even if the Democrats win the White House
this year, a similar shift toward mass action will likely take place in
2009. Thus, building the movement will be
impossible
now with tactics that simply ignore UFPJ and its member groups.
In
recent years UFPJ's ability to avoid or thwart unified coalitions for
mass action was made easier by the lack of democratic functioning and
the radical posturing of other forces in the movement, such as ANSWER.
Another
factor behind UFPJ's ability to go it alone without repercussions from
the ranks of the movement is a lack of understanding among some
activists, both inside UFPJ and beyond its ranks, of the importance of
mass action. Thus, complaints are often repeated: "We're sick of
national demonstrations," "Going to D.C. doesn't achieve
anything," and, as an inevitable corollary, "We need
something different!"
Some
civil disobedience or non-violent direct action advocates point to the
recent blockage of military supplies in Olympia, Wash., as an example
of something supposedly more effective. While the courage of the
handfuls of protesters involved isn't in doubt, the supplies were only
stopped for a few hours. And repeating such actions in Olympia and
elsewhere will do nothing to encourage the kind of mass turnout that
can really stop such supplies for good.
When
we get tens of thousands in the streets of port towns like Olympia, the
workers on the rails and in the ports, both civilian and military, will
begin to consider stopping these supplies themselves—and when they feel
ready to do so it won't be just for a few hours but until the war ends.
But to get to that point, first we must regularly get hundreds of
thousands and then millions in the streets of D.C. and elsewhere
against the war.
In
his 1970 speech, "Liberalism, Ultraleftism or Mass Action,"
Peter Camejo, a leader of Socialist Action’s predecessor group, the
Socialist Workers Party, explained the political and social roots of
the desperate search for
"new," "more effective" tactics:
"Sometimes
a liberal becomes frustrated not getting the ear of the ruling class,
and he concludes that he's been using the wrong tactics. So he adopts a
lot of radical rhetoric. He says this ruling class is apparently so
thickheaded that what we've got to do is really let loose a temper
tantrum to get its attention.”
In
contrast, said Camejo, revolutionaries with confidence in the working
class "are not interested in moving 20 or 200 or several hundred
community organizers to engage in some sort of civil disobedience,
window trashing, or whatever. We say that is a dead end, because it
doesn't relate to the power that can stop the war—the masses.
“You
can't ask the 15 million trade unionists to sit in at a congressman's
office. There just isn't enough room. Of course, the ultralefts know
that 15 million workers aren't going to do that, so that call is
clearly not aimed at involving workers."
Camejo
continued, "This is the key thing to understand about the
ultraleftists. The actions they propose are not aimed at the American
people; they're aimed at those who have already radicalized. They know
beforehand that masses of people won't respond to the tactics they propose."
Complaints
about the inefficacy of mass action were heard after every national
demonstration during Vietnam, even though most of them were bigger than
any demonstration yet held around Iraq except those just before and
after the war's launching. And during Vietnam, radicals like those of
us now in Socialist Action argued year after year that the failure of
any one national action to end the war just proved that we needed more
of them and even bigger ones.
And
in the end we were proven right: the war ended not because of any
action by Democrats in Congress, nor because of any "new" or
"different" civil disobedience tactics, but because of the
cumulative pressure of mass actions in the U.S. and around the world, and
the continued fight of the Vietnamese people.
Such
mass actions engendered a mood encouraging resistance within our own
military, which by the end of the war reached a virtual service-wide
refusal to fight, as well as the proliferation of thousands of local
groups engaged in daily organizing. But these more localized efforts
were encouraged by the mass antiwar sentiment that the national actions
generated and continually increased, rather than being seen as
substitutes for such actions.
Even
during the more favorable political conjuncture of the 1960s, the
relative quiescence of the U.S. working class led some to a mistaken
search for "new" tactics.
SWP
leader Lew Jones, in his "Report on the American Antiwar
Movement" to the 1967 Socialist Workers Party Convention,
explained that "the antiwar movement in the U.S. has developed
despite the absence of a mass anti-capitalist political movement and
despite the relative apathy of the labor movement. The American
political climate, dominated by the two parties of the ruling class,
has from the beginning exerted constant pressure on the antiwar
movement to adapt to its norms.
“Yet
this movement, since its first action, has consistently pursued a
course of mass action against the imperialist war in Vietnam." Just
as today, the movement faced three counterposed strategies, listed by
Jones as (1) the organization of periodic, mass, antiwar united-front
actions, (2) adventurist actions, which aim to substitute a handful for mass
actions, and (3) the use of the antiwar forces as raw material for
various class collaborationist electoral "peace" projects.
In
order to secure a broad hearing for the first option, radicals during
the Vietnam era organized and united local committees that represented
that wing of the movement interested in mass, democratic, independent
politics. Meetings and newsletters were used to facilitate
communication among them and to educate and agitate for such politics
in the broader movement.
The
understanding of the need for mass action is a given in a vibrant
workers' movement. The fact that it is not in today's antiwar movement,
especially among activists who've become jaded after their first few
actions, shows a lack of understanding of the real power in our
society, the only power that can shut down that society when it finally
feels confident enough to do so. Building that confidence requires at
this point getting large masses out in the street in peaceful mass
actions.
Lack
of clarity on this key issue is understandable in the absence of mass
movements, like those around civil rights, of the kind that inspired
and reinforced the antiwar movement during Vietnam. But the years ahead
will dramatically change that.
There
is a mushrooming resentment and anger at the impact on the working class
of job losses and wage cuts, home foreclosures, growing income
inequality, the racist treatment of Katrina victims, the lack of health
care, impending ecological catastrophe, and on and on. None of these
attacks has yet led to a sustained, well-organized fightback, much less an independent,
working-class-based party to lead such a fight.
But
the mobilization of 50,000 against racism in Jena, La., the five
million immigrants who struck on May Day 2006—even the failed but
significant efforts to reject the Chrysler contract by
autoworkers—point to the possibility that one or all of these attacks
could turn resentment into actions involving millions of people. Should
this happen it will be clear to the overwhelming majority of antiwar
activists where power really lies in society, and what tactics are
needed to draw on that power.
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