Letter to Frank and SAIC

-----Original Message-----
From: Ben Seattle
Sent: Tuesday, August 14, 2007 9:23 AM
To: 'pof-200'
Cc: 'pof-300'
Subject: [pof-300] RE: (1) Letter to Frank and SAIC (2 ) New Templates


Hi Alex,

This is very good news and very encouraging.

Your letter to Frank and SAIC is very good and it is very good
that both you and Marik have set up blogs for the distribution of
revolutionary content via the internet.

My comments here and now must necessarily be quite brief -- but I
want to say this is a very positive development.

I have had time to look only very briefly at the blogs but I see
that they are a combination of content by others plus your own
individual comments together with brief notes on your background.
I believe this is an excellent format and conforms to what
activists and readers want to see.

The letter to Frank and SAIC is quite good also.

I did spot one sentence that may be inaccurate. It is the last
sentence in the passage below:

> To flourish, SAIC will have to think more about
> the big picture (i.e., reaching a national audience
> and talking about the eventual defeat of capitalism).
>
> But many supporters of SAIC will be reluctant to
> do this because, according to them, there is no
> alternative to capitalism (i.e., they think that
> the only alternative is a police state like the USSR).

Half of the SAIC members are also members or supporters of the
CVO. But neither SAIC nor the CVO have actually said that they
are in favor of a police state -- nor have any of them written
anything concerning the democratic rights which they believe that
workers may (or may not) need after bourgeois rule is overthrown.
The CVO (in Joseph's articles) has indicated that workers will
have genuine control of the economy -- but he has not indicated
whether the democratic rights of speech and organization will be
necessary for this.

So we need to be careful in saying that either SAIC or the CVO
sees the alternative to capitalism as a police state because
(while this is probably true, at least for many of them) they
have been careful not to admit it.

If they did talk about it -- I believe their views would emerge
and that these views could be accurately characterized as
"paternalistic" (ie: they believe that in a period of crisis the
state, or a merged party-state chimera, would need to protect
workers from exposure to counter-revolutionary views -- rather
than understanding that the censorship function must be exercized
in a distributed way -- ie: counter-revolutionaries views and
ideologists would be fought, exposed or filtered out in a very
large number of independent forums).

My criticisms of the SAIC and CVO on this topic is that they have
failed to _challenge_ the dominant view (ie: that the alternative
to capitalism is a police state) on this topic that saturates our
political culture -- and that this topic has become the most
important and decisive theoretical question of our time.

Failing to challange this view (when the need to do so is so
great) amounts to a passive form of support for this view (ie:
similar to the way that the failure of the suposedly "socialist"
organizations to effectively challenge the influence of the
Democratic Party in the antiwar movement amounts to a passive
form of support for this influence). It is as if (to use an
analogy) all the political trends that exist supported the idea
that the earth is flat or that biological evolution is really a
false idea being promoted by the devil. In such circumstances, a
failure to challenge such reactionary views mean that one is also
on an ideological leash.

It is probably more accurate to say that neither SAIC nor CVO
members or supporters have shown any material evidence that they
consider this topic important or that they think about it at all.

Other than that one sentence, I think your letter is pretty
solid.

The SAIC website has an "about" tab which includes their email
address:
mail [at] seattleaic [dot] org

All SAIC members would probably get copies of your letter within
a few days if you sent it to the above address. My initial
impulse (which I resisted) was simply to email your letter to all
of them -- so that they would get it a few days sooner. But, on
calm reflection, it will be better for you to send it yourself to
the above address (with a copy to pof-300). The initial response
of Frank will likely be to simply assert that you are an
inexperienced activist who is being mislead and confused by my
clever and emotional phraseology, etc. But the fact that you
write directly to Frank and SAIC and ask to hear his and/or their
response -- increases the pressure on Frank to respond if only to
maintain his credibility within SAIC.

The other thing that might be useful for you to add (and would
only require a few words) would be to explain the basis of your
rejection of anarchism in favor of communism. This would be of
interest, I believe, to many.

All the best,
Ben