Jan 9th, 2007

Last night a group of NYMAA members went out for drinks after the Open City / NEFAC panel on Anarchist - Communism, an event rather well attended and overall informative and lively.

So we manage to find ourselves boozing into the wee hours with a member- actually one of only TWO members, of the NYC branch of the International Bolshevik Tendency [1], who had stood up at the panel to give the usual wingnut diatribe about Lenin and the efficacy of the Bolshevik party organization, blah blah blah.

Nice guy. Seriously, though, we tend to write off these small political sect members as if they're all just mindless dredgers of doctrine (which of course they usually appear to be) formulated some 80 years ago by some "ye ole koot" who no one cares to remember anyhow (and not to downplay the danger of suffering from such nonsence ourselves).

And then on the way home I realized what it was about that guy that annoyed the hell out of me. It was the fact that during the ENTIRE conversation with him, two or three hours worth (time flies when your'e a drinkin), he never, not once, actually asked a question. A question. The entire conversation was like a presentation in his mind. We were his audience. He was the panelist. He'd be doing the schoolin. We the learnin. Case closed.

This is maybe why there's still only two members of his "pre party formation" in NY, after I think 10 years! Guy can quote scripture until he's blue in the face, but can't have a few drinks with chums and actually be interested in what we have to say. And HE thinks he can better lead the working class.