RES: RES: Why the Left Always Loses: What is to Be Done?

[Justin Schwartz]

The Unitarians, the United Methodists, the United Church of Christ, among 
the Protestants, are big progressive denominations. There are a lot of 
hard-core progressive Catholics, nuns and priests who make a  career of 
getting arrested blockading weapons plants and the like. There was and to 
some extent is a Marxian-influenced Catholic tendency called Catholic Worker 
founded by a great woman named Dorothy Day. There's a left-progressive 
journal (mostly Protestant) called Sojourners, from which you can track the 
religious left in America. This is the white churches. The black churches, 
the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church and the Black Southern Baptists 
(the white S.B. are reactionary racists), are the political organization of 
the overwhelmingly liberal black community. Yeah, I know the lack of Marxist 
influence is a  problem, but this is America, the land of the free. You 
can't say that here. What are you, some kind of a commie?

--jks


>
>
>-----Mensagem original-----
>De: owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
>[mailto:owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com]Em nome de Justin Schwartz
>Enviada em: terça-feira, 16 de janeiro de 2001 02:50
>Para: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
>Assunto: Re: RES: Why the Left Always Loses: What is to Be Done?
>
>
>
>Alexandre,
>
>There is no evidence that the left is stronger when it submerges itself in
>the Democratic Party; on the contrary. The experience is that the DP has
>been happy to use the energies of leftists, and exclude them from any
>positions of responsibility or power. Leftists who advocate working in the
>DP have discovered that they get suckered into promoting right wing
>policies.
>
>It would be good to have a broad left party here. It would be unlikely to
>progress as rapidly as the Brazilain PT for lots of reasons, not least of
>which is that Brazil has a base of radicalized workers for such a party. In
>addition, we have a deeply institutionalized two party system that rejects
>any third party. There aren't enough Marxists of any variety here to make a
>difference; I would be surprised if there were 10,000 self-identified
>Marxists in America. There is a religiosu left that would be necessarily 
>the
>basis of any effective left organization here.
>
>--jks
>
>-Could you tell me more about the left wing religious groups in USA? I 
>think
>-that lack of enough Marxists is a serious trouble, since Marxism is a
>powerful
>-tool to understand the capitalist society from a critical point of view.
>-It´s difficult to build a left wing party withouth a "critical mass" of
>-Marxist intelectuals and militants.
>
>							Alexandre
>

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