Is there a point at which analyzing the past should become secondary to articulating a contemporary political program?
I think we have to do both at once. I m afraid that there is no point at which we can stop examining the past, and our relation to it. Left movements often make the mistake of acting as if they were living twenty to thirty years earlier than they are. When the movements of the sixties turned toward a revolutionary perspective, many people s conception of revolutionary politics had more to do with the 30 s than the 60 s. The student movement of the early 30 s opposed war; they were thinking of the world as it was at the time of World War One, not the world of Hitler and Mussolini. During the Gulf War many of us assumed that we were facing a re-run of the war in Vietnam (a protracted war). The only way to avoid such mistakes is to have a clear understanding of the past, the present, what remains the same, what is different, and what appropriate responses might be. But examining these issues should not stop us from organizing. You are one among few self-consciously left ist theorists with
