7-28-07, 10:04 am
In his response to a recent article I wrote calling on progressives to adopt different tactics with regard to the impeachment issue, David Walsh makes a number of shrill and dishonest points.
Walsh associates himself with a section of the far left that normally rejects dealing with electoral and congressional politics. And this is the point of his article. Walsh attacks Conyers and his supporters for not going forward with impeachment proceedings now. But then in the end reveals that he thinks the debate over and the struggle to impeach members of the Bush administration is irrelevant.
Indeed, the website for which Walsh writes typically adopts the view that elected officials like Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), a leading African American progressive, are no different than segregationists like Senate Minority Whip Trent Lott (R-MS). They are all the same, and anyone who says different is trying to fool you.
Walsh describes Conyers as 'a longtime Democratic political operative with strong connections to the trade union bureaucracy,' which is bad and corrupt, and accuses him personally of corruption and leading a cabal of Black leaders in Detroit who 'exploit [that city's] social misery for their political advantage.' In an ugly twist, Walsh's views of Conyers are regularly spouted by Michigan Republicans.
These distorted and blatantly dishonest views of Conyers are not shared by the thousands of working-class people in his district who nearly unanimously return him to Congress every two years. They are not shared by the people who are relying on Conyers to help pass universal health care (and other important progressive reforms), or even by most of the people who have chosen what I consider to be the incorrect and divisive tactic of protesting him on the impeachment question.
Most of the impeachment-now movement has insisted on their respect for Conyers' both personally and politically and his commitment to peace, civil and workers' rights, universal health care, etc., a view Walsh rejects.
But Walsh isn't content with attacking Conyers. He chose to turn his caustic scribblings in my direction during which he delivers a series of half-truths and incoherent statements that presumably mean something to a different generation of leftists than mine.
I am a 'stalinist' – he repeats it several times to drive it home. Phrases like 'parliamentary cretinism' and 'populist demagogy' must mean something to somebody. Then he reveals what he's really after: 'American Stalinists are well-practiced in slander, after decades of using it against Trotskyists.' Ironically, this accusation is little more than a projection of the very rhetorical tactics he uses onto the people he sees as his enemies.
His underlying point is to attempt to revive debates between trotskyists and stalinists, which no longer make sense. Nor did they make much sense to most people, when they were relevant, outside a tiny circle of dogmatic adherents to particular sectarian views from generations past. Well, I don't want to live in the past. I don't want to have that debate any more. In my view, it is irrelevant and those who insist on obsessing over it can't show us a way forward.
Walsh incorrectly insists that the opinions I expressed in my article are those of the editorial board of Political Affairs and of our publisher, the Communist Party USA. He didn't take the time to note that readers can find dozens of articles on impeachment on Political Affairs' website, the vast majority of which disagree with my argument.
Though Political Affairs has a definite pro-peace, pro-working class, pro-democracy, pro-socialist editorial point of view, regular readers will find multiple perspectives for this on our website. The broad array of the voices that speak out against the ultra right and for social progress are welcome at Political Affairs.
In contrast, that Walsh's article (or any World Socialist Web Site article) fails to carry a link to the article he is criticizing is a gesture by the editors of the WSWS that implies that theirs is the only correct point of view and that readers need not look elsewhere. Indeed, WSWS editorials are the views of the party behind the website.
Because Walsh writes for the WSWS, he is used to writing for a publication controlled by a party with a narrow sectarian view. Presumably, Walsh believes that this must be so for other pro-socialist or Marxist or politically left sites. He seems to assume that Political Affairs would never publish something that doesn't adhere to its 'stalinist' views.
Well, he's wrong. He hasn't followed the most recent positions or ideas of the Communist Party about what it means to be a communist party or, in my opinion, its new openness in which ideas can be cultivated, debated, and developed. We think that social progress or change depends on the movement of millions of people from different sectors of society with different voices and focuses – not a single party, like WSWS's backer, bent on ideological purity over all else. And all of the social forces and groupings that have aligned themselves against Bush and the ultra right will be needed to push beyond reform to a fundamentally new society.
Presumably, Walsh is used to the opposite in the organizations he works in and thus erroneously assumes the same about the Communist Party USA.
Another example of Walsh's projection of his personal hang-ups is his flat-out wrong accusation that I 'callously' refer to Cindy Sheehan. I never referred to her, and I never even mentioned Cindy Sheehan's name – for good reason. If he was unclear on this, he should have contacted me in an effort to clear up the point before making his claim. He never did.
I respect the losses of and express solidarity with all the families from all the countries who are victims of Bush's wars and to the members of the military families, including Cindy Sheehan, who have lost loved-ones in this needless and illegal conflict.
But Walsh need not get on a high horse about callousness. According to the party that publishes his articles on WSWS, the deaths of the people who participated in the invasion and subsequent occupation, including Sheehan's son, or ultimately supported the new regime in Iraq are justifiable.
In the particular portion of the article in which I discuss personal agendas, which he mistakenly and dishonestly assumes refers to an individual, I intended an altogether different point that involves the intersection of our personal motives with the political realities in which we are forced to operate.
In politics or a political movement should we let passion and emotion rule our choice of tactics? I think it is a mistake to do so. I think appeals to morality and principles are important, but they do not always tell us the best course of action that will help us win a particular strategic aim. Only on rare occasions does moral outrage alone show the way forward.
Taking actions that rely solely on our subjective point of view can end in disaster. Talking with people who both share our views and disagree with us, constructive negotiation, and finding common ground on the best tactics to use in a situation is a better means of finding the best steps forward than relying on personal agendas or on narrow, sectarian interpretations of reality.
If ending the war is our strategic aim, will attempting what I think is a futile effort to impeach Bush help accomplish it? If so, will calling Conyers a traitor or betrayer move the impeachment issue forward? I think no on both counts.
Bringing this forward was my point, and I am happy to clarify that. So why did Walsh dishonestly insist on putting words in my mouth?
Even as I personally disagree with groups like and Code Pink and with individuals like Cindy Sheehan and others on their particular choice of tactics for moving the impeachment process forward, and question the viability of the impeachment movement at this particular moment, I do respect their involvement with and willingness to work within existing broad political realities.
This is more than what one can say about Walsh's point of view: everyone in Congress (and in and out of the entire political system who disagrees with the party behind the WSWS) is corrupt, the processes that are available to make change are corrupt, and efforts, other than socialist revolution led by a tiny sectarian vanguard spouting catch-phrases authored in the Soviet Union 80-plus years ago, presumably, are futile and even delusional.
[Note: By the time this was posted, Walsh failed to respond to my e-mail queries asking him for further comment.]
--Reach Joel Wendland at
