Brad Mayer wrote:
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> Why are these simple basics so hard for americans to grasp?
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Most of what I might say on this has been said by either you or Yoshie -- and the discrepancies between your two posts reveal some of the reasons a party is so hard to create, aside even from your quite accurate remarks on "pragmatic individualism."
I would like to see some pulling and tugging on your conception of "present reality" and "our present tasks." The main fact about "present reality" is that no one knows how to go about even starting a Party (of either of types you list), and most proposals for so doing presuppose a party within which those proposals could be debated and implemented. As scattered radicals (it is a little presumptuous, actually, to call ourselves communists in the absence of a party) perhaps a key present task is to pursue more vigorously the sort of discussion your post (and Yoshie's) can provoke.
The established framework for electoral work in the U.S. should perhaps be given more thought. It very effectively forms the barrier it is intended to provide against actually politicizing elections. A very real danger is that any party (or pre-party formation) that focuses at all on elections will wear itself out before achieving the gains which could give it endurance. Electoral Parties that never win elections tend to be spirit-breaking.
I of course agree wholly with your remarks on necessary vs. sufficient conditions as well as Yoshie's corresponding contrast of "movement" and "party." And I think it well to recall that Lenin's very limited and qualified attack on spontaneism _presupposed_ rather more spontaneous struggle than now exists in the U.S. or has existed for some time. Without that greater level of "spontaneous" activity, organized party activity has nothing to work with. And the sparks for such a rise in popular participation in direct activity seem to belong, for the most part, to the contingency of history. They aren't predictable, even after the fact.
Carrol