John Studer and Terry Evans author a second long piece about the recently completed Oberlin Conference. It covers a grab bag of different topics, and so comes off as more disjointed than their first article. A lot of it isn't worth commenting on: they're still on the US lost the Cold War shtick, to which they now add that the Cold War wasn't really about defeating the Soviet Union anyway. These ideas are just silly.
I was hoping this second article would shed some light on the status and future of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP). It didn't. All I can do is read between the lines. We'll get to that in a minute--first some politics
Under the heading "Liberals attack workers' rights," Studer & Evans cite two pundits--first, the ever popular Paul Krugman, and then the more egregious Bryan Van Norden.
Mr. Krugman maintains the country is being led astray not so much by Mr. Trump as by his followers: the so-called deplorables. They've earned that moniker, in his opinion, and if they're not out-voted in the next election "America as we know it is finished." The Militant takes this as an insult to working people, who indeed built this country and have every right to their opinions.
In a limited sense I agree with Mr. Krugman. Trump's supporters (many of whom are workers) are not being radicalized (as Studer & Evans imply) but are instead being flattered and entertained. Which doesn't mean they're behaving irrationally. But Krugman is so certain of his own judgement and moral virtue that he can't imagine that anybody who disagrees with him could possibly have an honest opinion--they must instead be either crooks or dupes.
This very intolerance and willful ignorance is what makes Krugman so obnoxious. He thinks he knows better what is in people's best interest than the people themselves.
The very title of Mr. Van Norden's piece gives the game away: The Ignorant Do Not Have a Right to an Audience. Needless to say, Mr. Van Norden is a pin-headed academic at Vassar College and obviously does not get out very much. He needs to go talk to people from other walks of life. He'll learn that people know more about their own lives than he does.
Neither Misters Krugman nor Van Norden have the foggiest clue what Trump is all about. The Militant's criticism is right on the money.
Under the heading "Women's rights and working class," Mary-Alice Waters makes the following unbelievable claim.
The subjugation of women “isn’t inherent to human nature,” Waters said. Its origins aren’t in conflicts between men and women but “entwined with the way communal structures of preclass society disintegrated."Subjugation" is surely the wrong word--women are not always or even mostly subjugated. They didn't die by the tens of thousands in the trenches of World War I, for example. But the point is taken--women's roles in society are very different from that of men. Sometimes they're subjugated.
But it is at least partly "inherent to human nature." Given the evolutionary importance of reproduction, and given that men and women play different roles in that process, it is inconceivable that there aren't biological differences in body structure, brain structure, personality, and so on down the line. And in fact, there is--male and female bodies, brains, and hormones differ. By a lot.
One trivial example that crossed my radar screen recently makes the point. Of the hundred top chess grandmasters in the world, 99 of them are men. (Lone exception is Judit Polgar.) I won't claim to know why this is, but surely part of the explanation is biological. There is no way that socialization or male prejudice by themselves could have generated such an asymmetry.
So what's the future of the Party? Off hand they mention that a "year ago the SWP had just begun rebuilding industrial fractions." That's news to me--maybe I missed something? For the past many years the Party has just been "talking socialism," and abstaining from any actual "class struggle." I guess that's changed.
Otherwise the efforts of the Party are only briefly described.
These ranged from joining strikes and others workers’ and union battles, to activities supporting working people in Puerto Rico combating the devastation of U.S. colonial rule; from campaigning in workers’ neighborhoods with the Militant and books by revolutionary leaders; to participating in book fairs in the Kurdistan region of Iraq, the Philippines, and Cuba — and much more, as described each week in this working-class newspaper.Beyond this is a short description of efforts at Pathfinder Press, led by Holly Harkness. Two new comrades are introduced to us--elsewhere in the issue the death of Wendy Lyons is reported. So net recruitment is one.
Why the paucity of news? One look at this picture (accompanying Studer & Evans' article) explains a lot.
Mary-Alice Waters (inset), despite dying her hair (!?), still looks every bit the septuagenarian she is. Her audience seems only slightly younger. Indeed, I think they average about my age--66. Sorry, but these are not the cadre who are about to rebuild American unions. Not gonna happen.
Let me take this opportunity to comment on the new on-line look of The Militant. Generally I like it. The paper definitely needed a facelift. There is a lot of useful information readily available, including copies of the International Socialist Review from the 1970s. I'll probably take a look at those.
Two small quibbles, and then a big one. I wish the issue date were more prominently displayed on the home page. One would more easily know what one is reading. And then the "Features" column on the right of the home page should be more clearly labeled. It does NOT contain articles from the current issue--that's very confusing to the novice visitor. That said, it's nice to have that Features column there.
The big complaint is that it's still a newspaper. All a visitor can do is read--there are no comments, no likes or dislikes, no space for guest commentary (from outside the movement), and apart from the very tightly curated Letters to the Editor, no room for any feedback at all. It's as if they were afraid of something.
So it's not a webpage. It's not an organizing tool. It's not a way to get people involved. It's not the center of a thriving community. Instead it is Truth from on High--all you can do is read it and sigh I sure am glad they understand everything!
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