By Bob Gould the Pabloite

Having recently read a genuinely offensive piece of condescension
towards younger people in one of cyber-entity Roger Raven's recent
raves, I was consciously trying to avoid a condescending tone and if
Duncan Meerding tone thinks I was condescending towards him, I
unreservedly apologise.

There is, however, a bit of a difference between the excitement and
illumination when one is first soaking oneself in Marxism and the
viewpoint that you have after you've been around for 40 or 50 years.

One thing I find a bit interesting in Duncan's post is his reference
to me as a Pabloite, which suggests he has been digging around in some
of the old literature, If he keeps doing that, and I hope he does,
he'll end up knowing more than his prayers, so to speak. I hope that
doesn't sound condescending. Enthusiasm about the Marxist movement is
an entirely good thing.

When Duncan asserts that he'll never change his current tactical
approach, he should be a bit careful, because in my experience
tactical orientations often change. In my long experience I've rubbed
shoulders with quite a few who've moved from an initial noisy
ultraleftism to the extreme right. It's impossible to foretell what
one may do in later life, and it's unwise to make noisy assertions
about the future.

Duncan says I misunderstood his post and he didn't say Labor was a
fascist party. I take his point. I did consider saying that his Third
Period proposition was an implication rather than a bald statement,
but I decided against putting it that way because it seemed to me that
even suggesting that Marxists working in the Labor Party had some
similarity with Marxists working in the Nazi party was a rather
dishonest device for introducing the Third Period notion indirectly.

Duncan now repudiates that proposition, and good luck to him for doing
so. If he didn't mean to imply that Labor was a fascist party, why did
he make the analogy at all, and why did he compare working in the
Labor Party with working in the Nazi party?

Incidentally, I don't advocate that the DSP join the Labor Party, I
simply say there are three categories of socialists: those who engage
in independent activity such as the DSP, those who are members of the
Greens, and those who are members of the Labor Party. The critical
question is the united front, and the constant bombast from the
Boyleite leadership of the DSP implying that it is replacing Laborism
and Greenism is an obstacle to the united front.

I've now formed a mental image of Duncan ploughing through all the old
literature the way I did when Nick Origlass opened the door to his
ironing cupboard full of old bulletins and I'm developing a kind of
soft spot for him in that respect.