>Chris Kromm wrote:
>
>>Most of the Labor Party supporters I know have grown disgusted with the LP's
>>abstention from politics. Sure, it's great to organize around issues, but
>>that's not the point of a PARTY, is it? If "objective conditions" aren't
>>ripe to be running people for office (and I'm not sure when they will be, if
>>not now...), then why form a political party? The whole line of thinking is
>>a tangled rag of incoherence.
>
>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 Nader campaign could have been run as a joint effort of the Green Party & the Labor Party. It might have expanded the constituency of each party. It might have become a stronger campaign, linking organized labor, white youths, environmentalists, etc. on an expanded scale. It still wouldn't have had a principled platform on foreign policy, disability, race/gender/sexuality, etc. but one can't expect that from today's leftists who seek to avoid being labeled "vanguards" (horrors! -- let's not get too ahead of the "masses"!).
>The focus on elections is distracting and depoliticizing.
The LP, as it is, is _depoliticized already_ -- it's _economistic_ in the sense that Lenin criticized, lacking in all-sided political education (in fact, _purposely_ distancing itself from it).
>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.
What campaigns on issues is the Labor Party _as a Party_ running? I know some LP _members_ who are doing so, but they had been doing _the same thing_ before they became members & would be doing exactly the same without the LP also. What is the party doing in New York?
>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.
Why do you say that the New Party "has turned out" to be a support group for "progressive" Dems? Wasn't the New Party created _for this specific purpose_? I think that the Labor Party may "turn out" to be a safety valve for discontented unionists, giving them a false hope of an eventual electoral third party.
Lastly, I'm still not sure how staid social democratic orientation of the LP squares with wild autonomist excess of Hardt & Negri, unless your idea is that the state is a practical necessity only at the heart of the Empire. Why defend the LP while pooh-poohing the Pat Bond proposal of de-linking, regionalism, etc.? Should be the other way around!
Yoshie