Slutwalk and sectarianism

On FaceBook, Juan G posted a link to an analysis of Slutwalk:

http://www.yasminnair.net/content/slutwalk-end-feminism "If Slutwalk is to remain relevant, it needs to become more than a gathering where people share stories about their abuse. Without a critical self-awareness and a willingness to address and act upon the structural, economic, and political problems that face women and others, Slutwalk is in danger of becoming the Halloween of feminism: the one day of the year when women feel empowered to dress in scanty clothes and call themselves sluts, but which leaves them without the power with which to actually make and create the kind of change that goes beyond an Obama slogan.

There is nothing insignificant about the demand that people not be harassed or worse for how they dress, but reclaiming “slut” is only the beginning. There is a particularly vapid form of activism that has overtaken the left-progressive world, where mostly people of colour and other oppressed groups engage in “story-telling.” This works like a drum circle, an endless chanting of personal woes that drowns out the structural components of capitalism, and allows for the construction of a fiercer, more powerful neoliberalism that uses the realm of the personal to erase our consciousness of the destruction of our social, political, and economic resources." - a thought-provoking piece ;0

I made the following comment:


We can see it a bit like this... Every powerful movement covers a broad spectrum, from very radical to ultra-cautious, and the more powerful and long-term it is, the more kaleidoscopic and varied the colours and pieces making up the mosaic. Important historical movements affecting huge numbers of people (like universal democratic issues such as national independence, freedom of association and expression, and women's emancipation) include tendencies so clearly delimited from each other that they seem to be totally incompatible, even if they are mainstream in relation to the extremes. 
Slutwalk is one of these apparently separate mainstream trends. It doesn't advocate a castration for every rape, for instance, and it doesn't hide in the gut of male chauvinism like some ultra-respectable tapeworm, so it's not extreme. But it seems incompatible with rational class-based socialist programmes for women's liberation.
So let's not see it as a threat to feminism, but as a partial ally, doing our work for us in places we can't and don't really want to reach. Not the way we would do it, naturally, but nonetheless.
In the 1926 General Strike in Britain the students were out fighting the workers and scabbing alongside the cops and troops. In 1968 they weren't. In some situations the petty bourgeoisie goes rabid and supports the most brutal exploitation of the workers and farmers - Germany and Italy in the 1930s, say. In others it sides with the broad masses and boosts the forces of emancipation - Russia 1917, Cuba 1959, for instance. In yet others it vacillates - as in Venezuela today where the petty bourgeois nationalist military leadership opposes imperialism and its local lackeys.
Our job is to explain, agitate and lead working women and girls in a revolutionary socialist movement for women's emancipation. We haven't really started in this task yet, so naturally people who want to see things change join what's available and visible. Like Slutwalk.
Slutwalk and similar movements show us what gets people angry and on their feet, and reveal all sorts of creativity and humour in mobilization that we're not too good at ourselves. 
Hell, I welcome the appearance of extremes! It shows things are happening, things are moving. If we handle the extremes well it gives us a perfect opportunity to define our own position as clear and rational - that is, as the most attractive and human position to take.
We need to get out of the habit of smacking down every trend in the broad movement that riles us. It's defensive and sectarian. And if we can't handle the variety and human cussedness in our own movement, how the hell will we be able to handle the variety and cussedness of real world society when the capitalists have been kicked out and we get to run the country??

Buy your own books and literacy, proletarian scum!

A good article in the Guardian by Michael Rosen on children and books:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2010/dec/24/government-against-reading?


The problem (as almost always) is that treating this sort of issue (usually a democratic one) as a single issue outside the framework of bourgeois society will resolve nothing - so I made this point in my comment:


Thanks Michael Rosen for reading and responding to the comments.

Now, let's go back to 1945. British voters dumped Churchill unceremoniously cos he was a cold-blooded reactionary butcher. They wanted health and education and a decent future, and they got it. The Welfare State was created and my great-aunt Lil could toddle down to the opticians and get some proper glasses and finally get to see what the world looked like (at least the Bermondsey part of it ;-)

Everyone thought it would go on for ever. I went to university and it cost me nothing - the local authority funded me and thousands of others. I had a free eye operation as a kid, free dental care, free schooling, free school milk, free libraries, etc. Free because we all wanted a better society that shared and cared and was willing to pay for it through taxes.

But it didn't go on for ever, cos it was a Liberal plan to start with, and Labour only put it through cos they were afraid the people would toss them out as well for being cold-blooded reactionary butchers.

The bourgeois governments including Labour started rolling things back as soon as they could, and the intention was clear from Thatcher on - not just roll back, but ratchet back.

All this while Britain was getting richer and richer (if capital doesn't expand and get richer it dies). So it's not a matter of affording anything, it's a matter of wanting it or not, and it's a matter of compulsion, ie force or the threat of it - the cops and the army, or us.

So why reduce the question to BookTrust? They're great people (I've met one)  doing a great job, but given the way the government and capital are taking the country ends up pissing into the wind.

We won't get these governments or British capital to change direction, and even if we did, they would roll things back again as soon as they could.

So this time round we need to ratchet them out of the way, so they can't take back what's ours. So we get health and welfare (teeth, glasses, medicine, emergency help, child care, pensions), and our kids get to learn things for themselves and their friends and everyone in society. And learn to read and enjoy it, and choose for themselves what they want to read (and write) once they've devoured Arthur Ransome, Roald Dahl and J.K.Rowling (or Enid Blyton, W.E.Johns or whatever).

Nothing is a single-issue issue any more. And people, like Michael R, who want to resolve single issues in the framework of this society are becoming more and more obvious pie-in-the-skiers and utopians. Their work on the issues is great, but they won't *resolve* them without a revolutionary change in society.

Chomsky interview on C-Punch about war and empire

There's a good interview by Sameer Dossani with Noam Chomsky on CounterPunch about war, neo-liberalism and empire now:

http://www.counterpunch.org/dossani03092007.html

It makes good points about the differences between Asia, Latin America and Africa.

I felt a couple of things could have been brought out more clearly, though.

What Chomsky doesn't mention is the political power reason WHY the Asian countries could ignore IMF and US pressures and industrialize. Particularly Japan (the big one), Korea, and the other "tigers". It was a clear policy choice by the States to give them their head after the war, and let the local capitalists thrive. It was the only way to avoid a devastating series of social struggles encouraged by the defiant existence and growth of China and Vietnam that could have thrown imperialism out of the region. Not the same history of imperialist/colonialist domination as in Latin America and Africa (which Chomsky does point out, to great effect).

He also remains silent on the strategic revolutionary/socialist aspects of Cuba's international intervention(s). Its subordination to Moscow's Socialism in One Country nationalism etc.

He doesn't mention the changing class structure in India, with the wholesale extinction of the old mainly rural caste system and the creation of a modern urban working class. He describes impoverishment, but not proletarianization as a process. He describes the flight of millions whose land has been stolen from them into the cities to unemployment, but doesn't mention the class dynamic involved in this.

And he doesn't go into where Lula comes from and why he might be a good leftie (class betrayal running the errands of foreign capital and big local capital, instead of the working class that nurtured him), or where Chavez comes from and why he's a leftie at all (same kind of petty-bourgeois military base as Castro in the 50s, and same reliance as Castro on the support of the poor masses to withstand the attacks of imperialism). Of course, Castro had Moscow, but on the other hand, Chavez is deeply rooted in Venezuela itself, and in the military, and he now has control of oil rather than sugar. Serious democratic nationalism today is forced to head for socialism and internationalism if it wants to survive, it has no other choice except capitulation to imperialism. So in a way, Chavez is a throwback to the anti-colonial struggle in the age of imperialism :-) Not much of a model for other countries to follow in other words - but quite possibly an enabler of more working-class and contemporary socialist movements in other countries (maybe Bolivia, Ecuador, even Argentina) to seize the reins of power and move forward.

Interesting that he mentions Clinton but doesn't generalize on the strategic importance of his Latin American initiatives more. Clinton's policies re Mexico, re Colombia, and re Iraq all contributed more than anything the more aggressive Bush has done to undermine those countries and weaken them strategically. And we can expect a repeat performance if another soft-cop Clinton gets into the White House.