I’ve been reflecting more on the need to build a mass movement to defeat John McCain and stop the reactionary Republican agenda of racism and war. Mostly, I’ve been thinking about this in terms of the The Stop the War! Stop McCain! working group of Students for a Democratic Society, which is an important initiative from radical youth and students in that direction.
paper tiger
Hearing John McCain talk about 100 years of war in Iraq, watching him spit his racist and reactionary venom, reminds me of something Mao Zedong, the leader of the Chinese revolution, once said.
Now U.S. imperialism is quite powerful, but in reality it isn’t. It is very weak politically because it is divorced from the masses of the people and is disliked by everybody and by the American people too. In appearance it is very powerful but in reality it is nothing to be afraid of, it is a paper tiger. Outwardly a tiger, it is made of paper, unable to withstand the wind and the rain… When we say U.S. imperialism is a paper tiger, we are speaking in terms of strategy. Regarding it as a whole, we must despise it. But regarding each part, we must take it seriously. It has claws and fangs… Strategically, we must utterly despise U.S. imperialism. Tactically, we must take it seriously. In struggling against it, we must take each battle, each encounter, seriously. At present, the United States is powerful, but when looked at in a broader perspective, as a whole and from a long-term viewpoint, it has no popular support, its policies are disliked by the people, because it oppresses and exploits them. For this reason, the tiger is doomed. Therefore, it is nothing to be afraid of and can be despised. But today the United States still has strength, turning out more than 100 million tons of steel a year and hitting out everywhere. That is why we must continue to wage struggles against it, fight it with all our might and wrest one position after another from it. And that takes time… It seems that the countries of the Americas, Asia and Africa will have to go on quarrelling with the United States till the very end, till the paper tiger is destroyed by the wind and the rain.
U.S. Imperialism is a Paper Tiger
I think we have a lot to learn from what Mao says here about the strategy and tactics of dealing with paper tigers.
Unfortunately there is very often on the Left an abstentionist view put forward, a view that the problem is systemic and the voting makes no difference. This view argues that we should put forward a principled opposition to electoral poltiics. I don’t agree. Continue reading →
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