>I don't agree. For a tiny, young party to start running candidates
>runs the risk of celebrity-chasing; this is one of the many problems
>of the Nader candidacy. The focus on elections is distracting and
>depoliticizing. It makes much more sense to me to try to sign up
>members, build an organization, and fight around specific issues that
>could aid the organization-building. Otherwise you end up like the
>New Party, which has turned out largely to be a support group for
>"progressive" Dems in a handful of political backwaters.
>Doug
The idea that a mass labor party will be build in this incremental fashion is mistaken, I'm afraid. I'll predict that if a mass labor party appears, it will happen quite quickly and in unexpected ways. There is plenty of historical precedent for this both here and abroad.
But, under political conditions in the present and foreseeable future in the U.S., no such party will ever be build that abstains from elections, the only truly _mass_ political forum available in the U.S. currently. How do you intend to speak to the 80+% of unorganized workers? Further, abstention from elections is in fact a (negative) support for the two party monopoly, leaving it unchallenged on its mass turf. It also mistakenly assumes that the actual purpose of electoral participation is to "win elections". No, its purpose must be to disrupt the smooth functioning of the capitalist electoral system, in particular by cutting the Democrats off from their mothers' milk by _causing_ them to lose elections (which is what these parties are all about on the mass level) .
Additionally, political parties aren't built in isolation from the real world but in competition and conflict with their political opponents - the Democrats. I can't think of a better way to battle-harden a political organization than to subject it to the hysterical blasts of frightened Democrats. You'll lose some, but you'll gain much more in experience. And celebrities? This is America, home of Hollywood, get used to it, it's inevitable - you need to learn now how to handle these.
Labor Party abstention has given us Nader & Greens instead, who have moved in to fill the yawning void - that's the real problem with Nader: no Labor Party!
The sad truth is that the labor officials backing the Labor Party are playing the same two-track game everyone else is playing - in this case because they don't want to threaten their ties to the Democrat-supporting AFL-CIO.
But at least the Labor Party can remain "forever young", and forever irrelevent.
-Brad Mayer Oakland, Ca