The issue here is not, for the most part, that certain events or developments took place, at least not with Max, but the understanding of why they took place. For example, no one on LBO would argue, I think, that the Democrats have been a very active, much less forceful, advocate of a labor agenda since the era when the Taft Hartley Act was passed over the veto of Truman; what we need to understand is why that is the case, since such an explanation would necessarily inform whatever strategy one would develop to build a political presence which could and would perform that role. Those of us here who do not take the view of electoral politics as "moral crusade" tend to hold to the perspective that the lack of "political will" of the Democrats on such an issue is a function of the weakness of the mass [labor] movement, with the corollary analysis that that in a period of a far stronger and far more effective mass [labor] movement, such as the New Deal, the Democrats come much closer to fulfilling that role. Thus, the main strategic thrust should not be a vain attempt to replace the Democrats with some more ideologically pure political form, but to build the types of mass movements which will shift the political terrain to the left, and with it, the Democrats; electoral politics in the US at this moment is much more a terrain of avoiding defeats and setbacks, than of advancing gains.
The contrary argument, which Max employs here, is that there is something intrinsic, something essential about the very nature of the Democrats as a 'party' which makes it, invariably, the instrument of "betrayal." But this quality is never explicated, never identified in a way where it existence could be either verified or falsified. Instead, in classic essentialist fashion, it is assumed, as in Max's assertion that the failure of the Democrats to be the "tribunes" of the left in a nation which has had such a weak left for the last half-century means that they can not, under any reasonable set of circumstances, perform that role. But what is it about the Democratic Party which makes such a result inevitable? What are the specific qualities, once one gets beyond glib formulae that it is a "bourgeois party?" And, most importantly, how would those specific qualities be avoided/transcended in this "alternative" political party/form which is being proposed? What would keep a Labor Party or a Green Party from taking on the very same form, with the very same results, of the Democratic Party, if it were to replace it as one of the two major political parties in the US? These are the questions which are never addressed.
Certainly it would be unrealistic to assume that some form of parliamentary discipline, such as found in European social democratic parties, could be developed under the current constitutional form of American government, and even that parliamentary discipline has done precious little to keep the British Labour Party, for example, from becoming more and more a facsimile of the Democratic Party. Moreover, it may very well be that -- as Poulantzas argued with some verve almost two decades ago -- the political party itself is dangerously on the wane, and thus the pseudo-party structure of the Democrats [which are, organizationally, just a line on the ballot, more of a state apparatus than an independent political formation] is more a harbinger of the current political trends then a disciplined parliamentary party. Are we to return, a la Zizek's Lacanian-Leninist fantasies, to some form of Leninist Party, in which 'democratic centralism' is to provide the means of ensuring fidelity to the "revolutionary/progressive cause?" Even putting aside the obvious democratic objections to such an authoritarian form of political organization, does not the experience of "actually existing socialism" demonstrate that such an organizational form is no guarantee of such fidelity? But at least Lenin had an answer, albeit a tragically wrong answer, to the question "What Is To Be Done?," and that answer was based on analysis of how his Communist Party would be different, in essence, from the "bourgeois parties." All that we have here is an essentialism which relies upon the perception that what it must demonstrate is a self-evident historical truth, a call to history that avoids historical explanation and interpretation. That will simply not do.
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 lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its waters. -- Frederick Douglass --
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