A question - NEFAC and national liberation

There are some threads in thought on this, in particular this one -
http://libcom.org/forums/thought/for-john-how-is-the-wsm-soft-on-nationalism

The short answer is this, the official position of the organisation is what you read in the aims and principals.

Having said that two things must be kept in mind. One, nefac has a somewhat healthy level of internal debate going on about alot of different issues at all times.

Second, memebers are not allowed to do political work which counters positions of the organisation, now as far as articulating opinons on issues that do not directly affect th work we are doing on a day to day, things get much less clear what our position is.

Wayne, I think, is in the minority on his opinions about "the national question". Where I am, In Quebec (the largest section of the organisation, most people have a pretty hard line against nationalism, due to them coming out of the national question here in quebec.

I have a position much closer to waynes, though I hold many of the criticism of national liberation movements that most anarchist identify with, i would say I am much more sympathetic to people fighting for what they see as their liberation through nationalist colored struggles which alften have a strong class character.

I personally feel that alo of anarchist have very kneee jerk positions on many issues (electoralism is another one), now I fall within the anarchist position on that also, but I think we have to be alot more open to pragmatic politcs. Most anarchists disagreee with me. For the record, i recenetly publicly kept my mouth shut on the electoral issue because my section took a position and i respected it, although privately I hold the right to express my beleifs.

I would say the same goes for Nationalism, the differences is none of us are directly involved in National Liberation struggles so its a mute point for US to hold a "hard line" on that issue. I personally think encouraging debate, when political reality alows is a good organisational culture to encourage.

I think with nefac, some vocal individuals, often supporters, not full members, are mistaken to be the organisational line. The reality is most nefacers cant be bothered to have political debates over the internet all day, so you are getting a very small cross section of what the organisation is all about. I would go by what we say is our official statement, and what we actually do in real life. Internet debates and unofficial documents are just healthy debate.

Hope that helps a bit,

Dave

I'm bored of this topic of discussion. That's my position.

I personally think people tend to read too much into Wayne's (admittedly clunky) rhetoric. I think it is safe to say that when he writes something about "supporting oppressed nations" he means it in a fairly benign, protesting-imperialist-aggression sorta way (ie, "U.S. outta Iraq, Afghanistan... wherever else"). He's hardly rallying anyone to materially support bourgeois nationalist factions on the ground in any of those countries. Of course, anything short of generic ultra-left sloganeering apparently places him (and, by association, all of us from NEFAC) as somehow holding a nationalist line. Whatever.

Well, I apologize for making political assumptions, but your general approach here kind've smacks of the ultra-left purity pissing matches that often get thrown our way (particularly around the topics of unions and national liberation). Don't take this wrong way, because you generally seem like a solid comrade (and if your the same person I think youu are, your posts to Infoshop always brighten my day a little) but honestly people like you aren't a huge priority in who we are trying to appeal to. Usually someone who premises interest in our group with "well, I would be closer to your organization if you changed this minute aspect of your politics, or were just a bit stronger on this point, or shut X member the fuck up, etc" isn't really interested in our group at all. At least not in a way that would ever amount to anything fruitful. They just like to argue, and labor over minor details, and feed their own sense of political superiority because they apparently hold an immaculate position (...of one) that is as pure as the driven snow. Not saying this is where you are coming from necessarily, but in my experience a majority of "supportive" detractors unfortunately do fall in this category. Anyways, that's where the jaded cynicism comes from on my part.

Wayne also puts anchovies on his pizza while NEFAC's official line is for peperoni. WTF is wrong with you people?

wayne likes to masterbate with his left while, the the official line of nefac is right handed masterbation, and flints position is whichever way is girlfriend can fit the strap on up his ass.

You alsways take a simple analogy too far.

that is not true....

thug thinks "pizza," chuck's mind goes to "masturbation"....

just what's going on in those nefac meetings, anyway??

Neither of us are nefac members. Although we are both ex-members and overlap membership of the same collective by one day.

It comes up often. I can see why you are bored of it. Do you think that it comes up often for a reason though?

This seems to becoming the standard defence. I don't think that is anything to do with purity though. They are two of the most important questions. It is not an abstract theoretical line.

But Anarkismo, which NEFAC is involved in, does have at least one group in a country where there is an armed national liberation movement, AKİ in Turkey. The Kurdish question is one of the most important political issues in Turkey. Would it be ok for AKİ to not have a line on this question, let alone a hard line?

Also, it is not only something that effects the so-called 'third world'. Daniel makes a good point about this:

NEFAC usually tries to play down the importance of this:

It is a fact that Wayne Price goes beyond this. Maybe, members of NEFAC feel that this is 'benign'. It is also a fact that sites like Anarkismo, and Libcom have a much wider influence than among the member groups, or posters. What is Wayne suggesting that comrades in those countries where there are national liberation movements do.

Again Daniel's comments seem to hit the nail on the head:

As Daniel also points out, for all of the Platformists talk of theoretical unity, they seem to have very little at all. Their ideas do seem to be reheated Trotskyism with a little liberal sauce.

Last year I wrote that the only thing that distinguished Platformism from Trotskyism was the rhetoric, and their positions on parliamentarianism. When I suggested that this would be the next think to be questioned, I was mocked. I think that Rebel Worker has made my point for me here:

Devrim

I am not arguing against Platformism, or even anarchism as a whole here. I think that there can be, and are revolutionary currents within anarchism. I just don't think that the Platformist trend today is one of them.

Devrim

don't forget about the anarcho-maoists...

I don't think you can dismiss the issue of national liberation as "boring" or unimportant. It's not a simple issue like anchovies on pizzas or which hand you wank with. It's life and death for many and deserves serious debate.

it is boring in america. nationalism in america is a dead end for revolutionaries. I'll defer to folks in their home countries whether or not it works for them.

I actually wasn't commenting on Wayne's support or lack of support fr nationalist struggles. More that tactical and theoretical cohesion is about what the organization does in practice after a healthy internal debate, not about what this or that individual member thinks as an individual.

There must be criteria which we use to decide if groups have proletarian politics, or not. Otherwise, we would have to take every group that calls itself 'socialist' at face value. To take the example to a ludicrous extreme it would mean excepting that the Brithish Labour part was a socialist group. How do you decide that they are not? For us the first of these criteria is the attitude to capitalist war. We feel that the attitude of the Platformist current to national liberation struggles places it outside of the 'proletarian camp' (yes, I know it is a terrible phrase).

Devrim

Yes, I think so. I don't think that it means that Platformism has to be like this though. I think that Platformism as it is constituted today can't recognise the difference between a struggle in which is on a class base, and a struggle which involves workers.

Devrim

Its a bit silly to say things like "platformist current" eh? There are a handful of organizations that relate themselves to the platform, none of them are really all that close to the OPLC even if they refuse to admit it, and none of them have the same politics as any other of them.

Yeah, this thread is prime example of what makes these discussions worthless and boring. Like listening to hens clucking. I don't care what sinister underlying politics some person from a tiny ultra-left sectlet from Turkey or a stuck up know-it-all from a small anarchist collective in Belfast attributes to our group based on a few vague sentences taken from an essay written by one of our members. In actual collective positions and practice, our group DOES NOT support nationalism or national liberation ideology. The closest we have come is, crime of crimes, we raised some money for RAWA in Afghanistan once (which went towards building self-managed schools for young women) and we have critically supported indigenous struggles in our region. That's it. Everyone got it now?

Ouch. This is almost as devestating a critique as the time the Sparticist League called us "bourgeois class collaborators" or when the International Bolshevik Tendency claimed we were "reformist, pacifist, anarcho-opportunists" or when Green Anarchy called us "boring workerists who are unable to grasp the oppressive totality of civilized existence".

Its really tough on the collective self-esteem when EVERYONE is oh-so-much-more radical then you. *sigh*