This posting, on the other hand, is worth responding to.
>
> Yet you support for President a man who has spent decades training endless
> numbers of young activists in how to "access" that very establishment.
> Naderite groups are all about smart, progressive but very establishment
> access to legislators, the media and other organs of elite power. As
> someone who started his political career in a Naderite organization, the
> PIRGs, it was all about lobbying and mainstream access politics. And I
> exited the organization to the left as an anti-capitalist and rejecting
> political/lobbying means as the key to social change. That's why I became a
> union activist where workers can wield independent power without having to
> delegate their political power to elite professonal lawyers who lobby in the
> "public interest."
>
> Third party politics for Nader is all about just strengthening his usual
> inside-the-beltway position with a bit of populist legitimacy. He has said
> as much. The idea that by supporting Nader you are somehow outside the
> establishment game is a delusion, a deluision which would be far less
> obnoxious if you did not use it as license to abuse other activists who
> disagree with it.
>
> It is truly ironic that you accuse anyone of "worship of leadership" when
> the whole Nader campaign is about demanding that one leader, Nader, be
> recognized by the establishment, that it allow him into establishment
> debates, and so on. You respect the Greens precisely for its leadership
> The difference is that I respect the Democratic candidates not for their
> leadership - who I will happily dismiss as lesser-evil capitalists - but
> respect them for their consituent voters, who are far more diverse and
> working class than the elite Nader supporters.
>
> And the Nader promoters have to take the elitist position that those voters
> are fools and dupes for supporting the Dems. It is that kind of elitism and
> Nader leadership worship that makes me dismiss most third party politics.
>
> - -- Nathan Newman
>
>
This might end up turning into a productive discussion after all-insofar as this is possible on the net. There is a lot here and I'll make some general comments which seem to me uncontroversial. We can then move onto specifics based on which ones you take issue with, though I am rather busy tomorrow, as you might expect.
1) On the subject of leadership, at no point did I dismiss the importance of leadership under certain circumstances. Rather, my position is a middle of the road one. Namely that "the principle that rank and file must always uncritically accept and defend the prerogatives of leadership of organizations ostensibly set up in their interest has proven to be just as demobilizing and counterproductive as the anti-organizational tendencies you identify."
In other words, I recognize that an uncritical embrace of power and leadership can be as counterproductive and demobilizing as the failure to make use of the necessary tool of leadership. In not recognizing the former as a potential problem you are taking an extreme position, it seems to me.
If you agree with the above, it means that you are probably aware of circumstances under leadership has acted in a manner which did not merit the support of the rank and file. Again, I don't believe you are being sincere if you can't cite numerous instances during what one might call the recent era of triangulation. By continually refusing to make any mention of what is a consistent pattern of betrayals by the leadership or nominally progressive organizations, and their capitulation to "the Washington consensus" in exchange for personal advancement ("access" is a bit ambiguous here, see below for more on this point) you create the impression that you uncritically embrace leadership. In being willfully blind to the utterly craven and cynical behavior of a great deal of this leadership, you create the impression that you are not capable of calling a spade a spade, as I said before.
2) You are quite correct that I am willing to accept Nader's leadership for as long a he advances progressives interests. The moment he stops doing this, that he betrays the interest of his consituency for his personal advancement is the moment that I will cease to support his leadership. I should say that I have been continually and pleasantly surprised to the degree to which rather that continually tempering his critique of power, as has been the case with the few progressives who have been in leadership positions-Jackson, McGovern, Dukakis- Nader has continually expanded his critique in recent weeks. In any case, there is no contradiction in my accepting the nominal "leadership" of Nader since I have no principled objection to leadership. Rather, what I object to is the expectation of excessive and uncritical devotion to leadership, or the expectation that leaders (such as Pollitt-remember her?) deserve any more respectful treatment than anyone else.
3) There is a fundamental difference between "accessing" the establishment i.e. attempting to force concessions, even minimal ones from power by whatever means at your disposal and, to paraphrase Ehrenreich again, competing for "crumbs" of access offered up to leadership. The former has as its goal advancing the stated objectives of the organization. The latter has as its goal the personal advancement of leadership into positions of enhanced privilege and authority, often at the expense of its constituency.
4) On the point of whether those supporting the Dems are "fools and dupes," I don't believe I've ever said anything of the kind. Some, for example, op-ed writers at New York Times are neither. Rather, they are cynical. (Do you disagree with this?) Those who, understandably, believe the corporate media tells the truth, are naturally misinformed with respect to electoral politics, and it is not their fault that they act on this information, so they are not fools. Dupes is an unnecessarily unkind and pejorative word-victims of misinformation would be the correct description. Of those who have access to information which clearly is at variance with the official positions of the establishment media, such as those you have been promoting here, some of these are indeed both fools and dupes. It is not elitism to point out these fairly uncontroversial facts.
John Halle