Index * ance
Denis Horman 23(317-8)
Southeast Asia
Indigenous struggles
Syed Husin Ali 46(324)
Sao Paulo Forum
Declaration of Sao Paolo
Forum 20(320)
Spanish state
A slap in the face of reason
J Ramon Castanos 23 (320)
Spain: victory for right
Jaime Pastor 7(321)
At the crossroads
J. Ramon Castanos 10 (321)
Suicide of the Basque left
J Ramon Castanos 19 (325)
Sri Lanka
No peace in sight 12(319)
No to Eppawalla!
B. Skanthakumar 29 (323)
Trotsky
Relevance of permanent revolution
Michael Lowy 12(324)
Analyzing the USSR
Jan Malewski 16 (324)
Understanding fascism
Manuel Kellner 22(324)
The question of party
Francois Vercammen 32(324)
Trotsky's final struggle
Jean-Michel Krivine 36
International Viewpoint #326 December 2000 33
* Index
USA
A16, Washington DC: the battle after Seattle
Rodney Ward / Rick
Wadsworth
4(321)
A new student movement
Chris Clement 4(322)
For independent politics
Solidarity 2(324)
On the presidential elections
Solidarity 36(326)
Venezuela
Chavez's betrayal
Douglas Bravo 19(323)
Women
Maternity leave in danger
Document 35(323)
WTO
The world according to the
WTO
Pierre Rousset 19 (317-8)
Inside the anti-WTO movement
Harold Lavender 14(319)
34 International Viewpoint #326 December 2000
In Tribute to Joe Flexer March 23, 1933 - July 31, 2000 by Barry Weisleder, editor, Socialist Action (Canada)
IT is difficult to imagine a more political person, and at the same time a more passionate and caring person, than our departed comrade Joseph Flexer. Socialist Action has lost more than a central leader, more than a brilliant writer, educator and strategist. Together with the worldwide labour and socialist movements, with his loving family, and with friends too numerous to count, we have lost a powerful voice.
Joe's son Dani told the Toronto Star that Joe "became a communist and a mechanic at about the same time, at about (age) 15". His ideas took him from his native Brooklyn, New York to the Middle East where he joined an Israeli Kibbutz in the 1950s. His principles compelled him to break with Zionism, and to champion the fight for Palestinian self-determination. In the mid-1960s, Joe returned to North America, lived in Winnipeg and briefly in Montreal, and became an important figure in the movement against the war in Vietnam and on the socialist left. Joe settled in Toronto in the early 1970s. He became a provincial organizer for the left-nationalist Waffle movement in the New Democratic Party. I believe that one of his political assignments was to counteract the radical socialist wing of the Waffle in Ontario. Some of its key elements exhibited the growing influence of Marxist and Trotskyist ideas.
But a funny thing happened to Joe between the meeting hall, the library, and the bar. He became convinced that the Canadian nationalist and left-reformist leaders of the Waffle were wrong, and that the young revolutionaries, fresh from the anti-war, student and feminist movements, were much more his political cup of tea. Always an ardent internationalist, this was no great leap for Joe Flexer.
He helped to found the Red Circle, a Marxist group within the Waffle. It was in this period that I met Joe. This was the beginning of a thirty year friendship between us, one that matured into a very close political collaboration and comradeship. one that intensified over the past five years. Joe, as a person, was the biggest single political influence on my life.
The Red Circle helped to found the Revolutionary Marxist Group in 1973. which in turn joined forces with the League for Socialist Action and the GMR. a Quebec Trotskyist group, to launch the Revolutionary Workers* League in 1977. The membership of organizations to which Joe belonged looked to him as a central political leader, a theoretician and a labour movement coordinator. For years Joe led an internal tendency which strove to orient the inembership towards the working class movement, to speak the language and to live the struggles of rank and file workers.
Joe left the section of the Fourth International in the Canadian state in the early 80's, as the RWL succumbed to sectarian policies and practices. But his renowned labour activism continued. During the break up of the Soviet Union, Joe joined the Canadian CP for a brief period, hoping to link up with leftward moving militants. He became a member of a split-off group, the Cecil-Ross Society, and he encouraged its archival and publication projects.
In the Fall of 1995 Joe decided it was "party building time". He asked to join Socialist Action, and immediately became a member of the editorial board of Socialist Action newspaper. He took special pleasure in helping to found the NDP Socialist Caucus. He was proud of the leading role he played in the writing of the Manifesto for A Socialist Canada, and in being a federal co-chair of the Socialist Caucus.
Joe Flexer walked on countless picket lines, spoke at countless rallies and demonstrations, and touched countless lives. Everywhere Joe went he fearlessly argued, and patiently polemicized, always keeping to the highest Marxist standard. Everywhere he earned respect - even amongst his most steadfast political opponents. *
* USA The final result of the US presidential election remains uncertain as V goes to press; we print below excerpts from a statement by the US socialist organization 'Solidarity'. THE ELECTION OF 2000 has produced a virtual deadlock between the two bourgeois parties—-a probable Electoral College victory for Bush (pending the Florida recounts and lawsuits), a tiny popular vote margin for Gore, Republican majorities in both houses of Congress shrunken to near zero. For the capitalist ruling class of America, of course, "divided government" is no fundamental threat when both parties are firmly right-of-center corporate-dominated organisms, especially when profits are high at home and there is no huge crisis for imperial global management. While there will be plenty of bitter partisan rhetoric—-over the size of tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy, the pace and degree of social security privatization, campaign finances etc.—-the bipartisan consensus on the program of corporate neoliberalism at home and abroad will ensure that U.S. politics stay the course set by the ruling class. Should the Democrats or Republicans stray from that program, unelected bodies like the Federal Reserve will impose the necessary discipline to guarantee fiscal austerity and deregulation, and to prevent restoration of social programs. What does unsettle the elites is the prospect of a drawn-out struggle over who actually won the presidential election, resulting in a new administration with gravely weakened legitimacy. The longer the dispute continues, the more time for bigger questions to be raised—-the role of money, of the corporate media, of the rigged "debates" in choking off alternative voices and closing rather than opening up discussion of issues. That is why the system needs to preserve the reputation of "the process" more than the actual result. In a closely divided Congress, for example, it is unlikely that a Bush administration would undertake initiatives, such as banning union campaign contributions or imposing abortion rights restrictions, that would enrage key sectors of an electorate when the next Congressional elections are only two years away. At the same time, whether Bush or Gore are eventually declared the winner, there will be no meaningful debate on fundamental structural questions. For Solidarity and other socialists and radical activists in the labor and social movements, the results of this election are a mixed bag. We are proud to have supported a candidate, Ralph Nader of the Green Party, who told the truth—-the truth about corporate power and a political system purchased by corporate lobbies, about human rights and workers" rights, about the basic causes of environmental degradation. We do not regret in the slightest that Ralph Nader's vote exceeds the slim margins of difference between the bourgeois parties in several states, notably Florida. We congratulate the Green activists and the nearly three million Nader voters who stood firm in the face of the repulsive scare tactics of "liberal" Democratic party hacks. We are delighted that in a number of states the Nader campaign has solidified ballot status for the Green party. On the other hand, we are of course disappointed that Nader's vote fell considerably short of the 5% national threshold (even though we don't know how much of the vote for him was actually counted). It has never been clearer how urgently needed is a big break from the Democratic Party-a deep, decisive and permanent break that will be seen as serious by those crucial sectors who have been nightly cynical about the whole system but who equally justly feel genuinely threatened in their own lives by right-wing Republican policies. Did the Ralph Nader/Green 2000 campaign contribute to such a break? Time will tell. For the first time since the mid-1960s, a social movement may be producing a generation of activists prepared to move to independent politics. For us, as socialists and as activists, the struggle continues-the struggle to build both independent politics and most important, the social movements that give those politics energy, momentum and hope. For the bourgeois parties, this election is a dead beat and the result will be more politics of a "dead center." For those with a pro-working class agenda, especially those with a perspective for abolishing corporate power instead of tinkering with it, the job has just begun. * Subscribe to International Viewpoint! Half price for all new readers! Pay only half the subscription costs below if it is the first time you have Your name subscribed to International Viewpoint!
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