New Member says hello

[sonofuberman]

Any comrades based in North Wales?
:confused:

[Colonello Buendia]

I'm a Glasgow guy meeself, nice to meet you be the way:D

[RedAnarchist]

Hi, welcome to RevLeft:)

[sonofuberman]

Cheers!

[Holden Caulfield]

welcome to the board,
ther was a location survey a while ago and i think we had a fair few ppl from wales,

[F9]

Welcome comrade :star:
what is your political statement?

[hekmatista]

I'm no theorist, and not very much of an activist. Having said that, I wasn't born yesterday either. Let's get autobiographical for a bit. My opinions are grounded, like everyone else's, in my life experience; their "legitimacy' rests on rules of evidence and logic.
In 1968, at fifteen, I was a fairly standard rank and file liberal (because my parents were). As a son of two public school teachers, growing up in a blue collar white neighborhood, going to Catholic schools for twelve years, my ideas were those of the "progressive' wing of the Democratic Party. Segregation was wrong, the United Nations was the appropriate venue for settling conflicts whenever possible, and (if not) a sensible military policy under civilian control would contain the Eastern Bloc threat, with help from our NATO, SEATO, etc. allies. Modern corporations generally behaved with some sense of social responsibility and when they didn't the government helped regulate their destructive proclivities. Good legislation and labor unions would continue to correct the problems of "excessive" inequality in what was for the most part a meritocracy. The market, suitably guided by Keynesian policy, pretty much reflected consumer sovereignty. The main domestic social problem was extending the benefits of an affluent society to the remaining "poverty pockets" left over from the too- partial success of the New Deal. Oddly enough, these ideas which did not at all challenge the prevailing orthodoxy, were resented by my peers; in the neighborhood, my problem was not subscribing to the racist consensus, while at my elitist high school, the suburban majority, insofar as they thought about political matters, were heavily influenced by NATIONAL REVIEW, years before "gloves off" capitalism was hip.
It was in this context that I was introduced to varieties of "revolutionary" thought. The immediate occasion was the April 27, 1968, antiwar march and rally at the Civic Center (now the Daly Center) in Chicago. How I even heard about it ahead of time, I can't recall, but I talked my buddies Wesley and Frank into going down there on a Saturday. All three of us were into the "don't bomb, negotiate" mode; given that all our information came from the mass media, what else would our perspective be? Once there, of course, the usual radicalization by osmosis began. First there was the question of militance; having gone to the trouble of taking a bus downtown on our day off, a polite parade would have been a letdown. Second there was the content of our "demands"; when everyone else is chanting "US out now" or even "Victory to the NLF" there's a strong group pull away from "Negotiate Now." Third there was polarization; the crowd was "us," the hecklers and police were "them." Finally there was radical rupture with the familiar, when the cops attacked the crowd. None of this presented itself at the time as a set of "theses" to be analyzed; it was more of a primal experience of suddenly realizing that not only is "my" government wrong, but it actively hates me when I say so. That is the felt conclusion one draws from watching women get beaten for holding signs. The regime is not just mistakenly hurting other people far away, it WANTS TO HURT ME.
Busting up the paradigm one has lived by does not mean a replacement is immediately available. Perhaps the more clever members of the species develop their own, but most of us cast about looking for another (already constructed) model of reality. And so my search began to identify the sources of the obvious injustices apparent to anyone and find someone who was working on solving them. Student Mobilization at Uof I Circle in those days was the main organizer of the follow up "March for Civil Liberties" two weeks after the Civic Center police riot. April 10th was a lot different from the earlier rally; Parade Marshalls made sure the crowd was on the same page as far as slogans, chants, songs, even the order of march (rows of four). Aside from liberals and pacifists, the most visible "tendency" were the Young Socialist Alliance and the SWP. The MILITANT was my first introduction to Marxist-framed arguments against the status quo. My adrenalin was still pumping from the previous rally (first blood, so to speak), so I was primed for a shift of perspective. It could have been anything that called itself revolutionary, what did I know at fifteen? But I was a fast learner.
One thing I've learned over the forty years since then is that the particular revolutionary anti-capitalist tendency one winds up in has as much to do with accident as anything at first. Later, we tend to get drawn to the tendency that seems to be "where the action is," regardless of theoretical consistency. A little realism on why comrades are where they are would keep some of the sectarianism we've all suffered from (and inflicted) from continuing to damage the movement as a whole. There are good proletarian activists who describe themselves as Trotskyite, Maoist, Stalinist, Left Communist, and Anarchist. I've been close to all the above, have at times defined myself according to one of the classifications, engaged in heated polemics with people who were barely distinguishable from me in their positions, and concluded that the most important question is class stand. One either identifies with and fights for the interests of the working class, or one does not.

[RedAnarchist]

Hi, welcome to revleft:)

You can make a seperate thread for yourself if you like.

[Bastable]

Welcome to revleft, comrade!:D