Pages

Sunday 5 September 2010

Tariq Ali: advice to a young activist

Tariq Ali, asked to offer advice to those who are new to left-wing activism, replied:

'Well, I think you have to be activists who learn from many different traditions. Certainly from Trotsky and Gramsci and Lenin; and Marx, for that matter. One can learn a great deal from these great thinkers, but to put any of them on a pedestal is just wrong.

We have to create something new. It can’t be totally new, because we can’t ignore the past and our history, but there are certain things which have to be done in a different way.

And that style of political organisation without any serious debates or discussions, where minorities are booted out, expelled… it was a parody in the sixties and seventies, but today it’s just a joke. I really think that young people are not attracted to that at all.

What you’ve asked me is not an easy question, because the honest answer is that I am not 100 percent sure myself what the best way is to go about it. But what I do know is that the old style is the wrong way to go.'

Read more HERE

Also see this short introduction to Trotsky - and my own thoughts on roughly the same topic as Tariq Ali addresses above.


Share

No comments:

Post a Comment