OK, you're not a self-respecting socialist: at least we cleared that up.
And, yes, a DLC Democrat is a right wing bourgeois politician. I am liberal democrat (small "l," small "d"), but I don't see from what perspective a self-respecting "radical democrat" can treat big Al as anything but a right wing bourgeois politician. He is only "centrist" in a political environment that runs from the center right to the far right.
--jks
>From: LeoCasey at aol.com
>Reply-To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
>To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
>Subject: No Self-Respecting Socialist
>Date: Mon, 6 Nov 2000 12:41:16 EST
>
>Justin writes:
> > It is a way of making the point that except in situations more extreme
>than
> > ours, no self-respecting socialist of any sort has any excuse for voting
> > for a right
> >
>
>Well leaving aside the rather tendentious transformation of Al Gore from a
>centrist Democrat into a right wing bourgeois politician [I know, since he
>is
>a Democrat he is bourgeois, and since he is bourgeois he must be right
>wing],
>I guess that the main point you want to make, like good old Doug, is that I
>am not a self-respecting socialist because I believe -- and advocate --
>that
>a Gore victory holds the best hope for the advance of the mass left in the
>US.
>
>Would it help you any of I pointed out that I have no investment in being
>considered a "self-respecting socialist" here? Indeed, if I were to
>describe
>my politics in those general terms, it would be as a "radical democrat" who
>comes out of a democratic socialist tradition, but sees a need to radically
>revise many of its central precepts.
>
>What I can't get help but chuckle at, though, is the irony of how attacks
>on
>this politics by Doug and now Justin above, charged with self-righteous
>condemnation of betrayals and betrayers of socialism, still manage to lead
>with denunciations of it and me as self-righteous. I guess one of the
>reasons
>for the affection for Zizek is that Lacanian psychoanalysis doesn't bother
>with the study of projection.
>
>Leo Casey
>United Federation of Teachers
>260 Park Avenue South
>New York, New York 10010-7272 (212-598-6869)
>
>Power concedes nothing without a demand.
>It never has, and it never will.
>If there is no struggle, there is no progress.
>Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation are men who
>want crops without plowing the ground. They want rain without thunder and
>lightening. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its waters.
>-- Frederick Douglass --
>
>
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