A preliminary: From a socialist perspective, what kind of party are we talking about here? The two limiting cases on this question: 1) A socialist, revolutionary, working class party that intervenes at many political levels under a variety of conditions, in a variety of formsranging from liberal 'social peace' to fascist counterrevolution; 2) A mass, broadly 'progressive' party that unites socially heterogeneous struggles, targets intervention into the electoral process under conditions restricted to those of relative social peace, for for the purpose of creating (where none exists) an independent political party organization in opposition to the parties of the dominant political regime. It includes working class organizations, but is not predominantly working class in ideological orientation;
I assume that #2 corresponds to 'our present tasks', i.e., to present reality, and is the kind of party referred to here (by me at least).
>At 01:46 AM 5/31/01 -0400, Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
> > Do you work to build & promote it? I believe you don't. Most
> > LBO-talkers don't either, I think.
>
>you have no right to think that about anyone here. furthermore, were i to
>use your critieria and apply them to you, i would draw the conclusion that
>you do nothing to build and promote a party also since apparently you think
>being a union activist for nearly twenty years --and written about it
>frequently enough for four years now so that there's no excuse for you not
>knowing about what i do/have done-- makes one among those who do nothing to
>build and promote a party.
>
>however, i happen to think that union activism is part of building a
>socialist left and a party-whatever that means "party".
So, what do you think 'party' means?
>so i would count
>you as a person who promotes and builds a party, as inchoate as that
>party/left movement is right now. i mean, yoshie, do you really think that
>the following is somehow not part of building and promoting a party:
The answer: NO - really! These are a necessary but not sufficient conditions for building a party (listed below):
>- -striking in support of striking teachers without a contract
>- -fighting for plant closing legislation
>- -fighting against toxic dumping and low level nuke dumps sitings
>- -working on a documentary film undermining false claims about plant closing
>and creating fora for undermining those false claims
>- -creating a series of town meetings to raise awareness about an impending
>plant closing and to organize communal networks to address that closing and
>to get people to think about the nature of work and capitalism
>- --helping organize a union struggle at a nursing home and at a plastics
>plant
>- -fighting for community oversite of the cops
>- -clinic defense and building a feminist adolescent pregnancy program to
>reduce the high rate of teen pregnancies
Evidence: Such struggles have gone on for decades, but no party has emerged out of it. Something else is needed - beginning (as one must with americans) with a proper understanding of the supreme importance of, and a grasp of the elementary concepts of, political party organization. That is all that's really left once there is general agreement on political principle (socialist) and perspective (in opposition to the ruling political regime).
But most americans lack even the concept of 'political regime' - that's something found in 'other countries', not the USA. Here, leftists think in terms of an eternal 'government' that lives on forever and ever, amen. But it hasn't, and it won't.
>how are these things irrelevant to building and defending a party? if
>there is really no party to join--and there sure hasn't been a whole lot
>where i've lived and what there was being engaged with those folks mostly
>led me to the above, then what exactly more do you want me to do to prove
>my activist street cred to you?
To repeat: they are not irrelevant: they are vitally necessary - but not sufficient.
>i certainly don't seek to create a party that seeks to get people elected
>to office. nor, i imagine, do you based on what you've typed.
No, of course we will seek to construct a party (of the kind I am talking about here) that will intervene in the elections!!! To not understand this is a good example of one of those fundamental failures of understanding just what kind of political organization we _must_ build under conditions not of our own choosing or making. When those conditions change - hopefully in a positive direction effected by the intervention proposed here - then we can develop another kind of political organization appropriate to the changed conditions.
Of course, people elected to office can be co-opted. That's a problem - like socialism after the experience of the Soviet Union - that we have to come to grips with and resolve, not run away from. Otherwise, why bother?
Why are these simple basics so hard for americans to grasp?
-Brad Mayer Oakland, CA