Doug Henwood wrote:
> J Cullen wrote:
>
> >small farmers who are struggling to stay on the land
>
> Who vote Republican, rail against Washington, and live on federal
> farm subsidies, right?
Yes. J's collection of allies almost exactly duplicates the position of the RCP in its early days. It suggests that U.S. "maoism" might have had its roots in the populist movments of the past, with populist politics merely overlaid with a collection of "Maoist" slogans.
United Front politics in the U.S. simply fly in the face of the empirical reality of class relations in a developed capitalist nation -- the elements for such a united front (peasanst or family farmers, demographically significant number of belieagured petty producers, a "national" bourgeoisie, etc.) simply do not exist. Utopian populists have to create those elements in their fevered imaginations.
Carrol