Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>
>
> Let's suppose that you are a strategist for a political party to the
> left of the Democratic Party, who is confronted with the above
> figures. What's the program that you want to advocate? What's the
> strategy to mobilize people for it?
> --
First, catch a tiger. :-)
Many of us would like to see a mass (electoral) party of the left in the u.s., but such parties can't be built directly. If they happen at all, they are cobbled together out of the parts of a mass (non-electoral) movement. (Actually, that was initially the source of the (now defunct) great social-democratic parties of Europe. (It was also the source of the Republican Party, incidentally.)
I'm beginning to fear that there is no chance for a left electoral party in the u.s. until the DP collapses entirely -- say if its representation in the Senate fell to three or four, with only one or tw governors. That is daydreaming -- but hardly as bizarre a daydream as the hope to turn the DP itself into a left party.
There is no good historical parallel for current political conditions in the U.S. Perhaps the conditions in Europe prior to the formation of the parties, leagues, committees, etc. that grew into the Second International. Anyhow, it is pretty clear that talk of "the left" at the present time is a serious barrier to the coming into existence of a coherent left. You can't create what you fantasize already exists. And those who continue to express "criticisms" of The Left are like a bunch of Cub fans sitting in Wrigley Field in mid-December screaming insults at the ghosts on the basepaths.
Carrol
> Yoshie
>
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