october_lost said:
Point taken about the left being obsessed about national demo's etc., (see my previous post) but here you are really barking up the wrong tree, since it should be obvious a potracted war is costly in many ways economic, social, political and even culturally.....
Perhaps it was bad phrasing . I take for granted that in no sense does imperialiism benefit the working class of any country in the long term. Whilst sections of the w/c might be better off financially, employment patterns can change beficially and the access to cheap minerals or scarce resources may increase in the short term, ( I always think of Shipbuilding when I try and explain this) in the long term all the things you describe above are true.
The question asked was was the left right in America to lead the anti Vietnam movement or should it have just let them get on with it. After a bit of hurried reading I am not convinced that the left actually did lead the anti war movement.Radicals yes, pacificists yes, future leaders of the Weathermen, yes, future Democratic party members yes, members of what was to become the Black Panthers yes but by and large not the left and certaintly not the revo left.
There is no doubt that the revo left was reborn out of the anti Vietnam protests in the same way it also grew out of the invasion of Czeckslovakia and other events in the Eastern bloc.1968 was a big year Martin Luther King assasinated, Robert Kennedy assasinated, the rise of international student protest, the Czeck spring, the Olympics protest. A significant number of the studenst involved were the sons and daughters of the old left and radical movements of the 1930s. In my view the fact that protests were against both capitalist and state capitlaist regimes and that the movements were smashed with such force and brutality meant that any illusions in the orthodox political movements and systems were exposed.
It is though quite interesting that those who led the 'movements' or became their spokesmen were students , I can't think of anyone who bucked this trend Rudi Dutshke, Cohn -Bendit, Tarq Ali, Mark Rudd, Tom Hayden etc.
There was opposition to the war from some unions and union members but I couldn't find any reference to strikes against the war per se, the Taff-Hartley Act made such strikes very difficult to achieve. And as has been said before their were some attempts to try and link trade unions strikes against major war companies to the question of the war itself.
Incidentially in 1970 students demonstrating against the Kent state killings were atacked by building workers and the same month saw a huge demonstrarion called by building workers union leadership in favour of the war.
A mate of mine says that Phip S Foner, (who wrote an excellent book on the IWW I think) has written some stuff about American labour and the war. Speaking of which ie the IWW I think that it was in australia they actually did have a general strike against the first world war.
l