It is very important for people to work hard at compromise, especially when they are in a relationship. It is impossible to maintain a good long-term relationship or a marriage if every time somebody disappointed us, we decided to walk out the door. Now speaking for myself, I am not very good at keeping such relationships going. Not that I don't try. I had a girl-friend named Alicia who I really loved and she sort of loved me, or needed a place to stay--I'll never know. In any case, she smoked three packs of cigarettes a day and I am a heavy snorer. So I put up with her smoking and when my snoring got too bad, she'd sleep on the sofa. She was also a bit of a Catholic which led to problems since I think all religions are bullshit. To drive her crazy, I'd used to read Karl Marx while watching Jimmy Swaggart on Sunday nights. "Don't you think he's swell, Alicia?" She glowered at me. Eventually she left me for some actor lout, which was just as well.
But there is one type of relationship where this sort of give-and-take does not make sense and that is with bourgeois politicians. People like Chris Burford seem anxious to figure out ways to make our relationships with bourgeois politicians successful. I think it's a waste of time. The reason for this is really quite simple. When Alicia told me that she loved me, I had to trust her. Our relationship was based on trust. But politicians can not be trusted. When Albert Gore says that he is for the environment, you'd better stock up on bottled water. David Brower, the dean of American environmentalism, wrote that the Clinton-Gore team is much worse than Bush was on green issues. Clinton and Gore were elected to restore the safety net that the vicious Republicans were supposedly intent on getting rid of. And what did the Democrats do when they won power? They abolished welfare, the most important structure that is supposed to protect people from the sort of abject poverty that characterized Charles Dickens's London.
So why do these people keep disappointing us? Is it because they are deceitful like the lovers on Dallas, Beverly Hills 90210 or any other night-time soap opera? No, the explanation is not in the individual psychology but in the way our society is organized. There are two classes in our society. That's right, two. Count 'em.
The capitalist class owns the means of production while the working class is forced to sell its labor-power for a wage. The capitalist class uses the Democrat-Republican political party to maintain its class rule. Propaganda, onerous ballot requirements and left-wing collaboration with this party have made it difficult historically to challenge its rule. This will change as the social and economic crisis deepens.
The first breach in confidence in this party occurred after "peace candidate" Lyndon Johnson won the election in 1964 and proceeded to implement the program of the "war candidate" Barry Goldwater. Tens of thousands of young people, including me, were radicalized by this experience. Our initial reaction to LBJ's Vietnam intervention was that he had betrayed us, like a parent who we discover has been involved in some shameful activity behind our back, such as selling drugs or pedophilia. "How could you do this to us?!" was the reaction of many SDS'ers and other new leftists. "Some parent you are." Disappointment with LBJ led them to a search for surrogate parents, such as Bobby Kennedy or George McGovern.
A small layer of this generation decided that all these parents were rotten from top to bottom and we decided to run away from home. We packed our underwear, toothbrushes and radical books into a knapsack and ran away like Huckleberry Finn. And some of us never went home. People like Chris Burford remind me of the "goody-two shoes" characters in Huckleberry Finn who accepted the hypocritical world of the grownups. In times like this, it is much more civilized to be an outlaw.
Louis Proyect (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)