Doug Henwood wrote:
> Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>
> > In fact, as far as the Labor Party is
> >concerned, I'm not even sure if it wants to be an independent political
> >party or just a pressure group vainly trying to move the Dems to the left.
>
> While that seems to be the goal of the New Party, the LP people I
> know, from Tony Mazzocchi on down to rank-and-file members of the NYC
> branch, are serious about breaking with the Dems. "The bosses have
> two parties - it's time we had one" is a party slogan. The strategy
> is to develop a platform and to build membership. Mazzocchi wanted to
> wait a long time before running candidates, saying that electoral
> politics without any kind of membership base would be a waste of
> resources (and run the risk of pursuing personalities to act as
> standard-bearers instead of building membership). I don't know
> whether this is going to work or not, but it's worth a shot.
Perhaps those with more detailed knowledge of U.S. history can correct me on this, but my impression has been that a new party (that can contend for national office) only emerges *after* one of the "two" parties has collapsed. The Whigs emerged from factions in the Dem-Rep party after the collapse of the federalists. The Republicans emerged from various fragments after the Whigs had collapsed.
As to the Labor Party strategy Doug describes. Does this mean that, in the meantime, the Party will urge its members to boycott elections or will it in practice "allow" or "urge" its members to support this that or the other Demirep? If I am correct that room will emerge for a real new party only from the wreckage of one of the old ones, cooperation with even the most progressive Democrats would seem unwise.
What is the "final goal" of the Labor Party?
Also, is a serious Social Democratic Party (which we have never had in the U.S.) a pre-requisite for the building of a real Communist Party? Lenin's *Left Wing Communism* was pretty persuasive in urging the new Communist Parties to work with Labor in England, etc, but that argument does not, it seems to me, apply to parties (such as the Democrats) that don't even pretend to be for labor.
Carrol