> Huh? What incited the bogus dig at "well-read radicals with specialized
> radical educations"? As irrelevant as the few Marxist-Leninists can be,
> it isn't very common, whereas obtuse populism can be pervasive. In
> fact,
> the latter is more problematic for American third parties, and the Left
> generally, than bookish Commies.
I think I wasn't as clear as I should have been (a fault I often suffer from). I am certainly not taking an anti-intellectual position, or arguing for obtuseness. I meant to suggest that too much radical analysis by Americans seems to me to be based on ideas obtained from poor translations of German or French texts (my acid test for such writers is their use of the word "valorization" -- once I hit the v-word in a text, I quit reading it), and too little of it based on a deep study of the unique political system and conditions of this country.
> Certainly, for the vast majority of Americans politics means Democrat v.
> Republican. Period. But a big part of radical politics is *not*
> accepting the world just as you find it.
If the theory is correct that the U.S. system of single-representative constituencies with winner-take-all elections makes effective third parties impossible, then organizing such parties would require changing the whole system, and I don't see any big groundswell in the public for going to a proportional representation system. I'm not quite sure myself whether a PR system would really be a big improvement, since radical politics in most countries that have it doesn't seem to have advanced much more than in this country, but it would make stable third parties with some staying power (see below) more feasible. OTOH, one has to always remember that in such a PR system, not all the "third parties" are on the left! :-)
Carrol Cox wrote:
>Precisely. Everyone can see the hopelessness now of 2d & 3d
>international strategies, but the same people fail to notice that
>"progressive electoral strategies" have had even _less_ success over the
>last century and a half. You get brief periods (usually not more than 3
>years from an 8 year administration) of gain (partly real, partly smoke
>and mirrors), followed by 30 years in which conservative forces slowly
>and steadily chip away at those gains. The New Deal ended essentially in
>1938. The New Society (thanks to Nixon and his fear of the mass
>movement) lasted until '73 or so. And how much remains of either?
I've always thought that progressive movements have a hard time surviving for long periods simply because they are swimming against the capitalist current. Right-wing movements have more staying power not only because they get most of the fat-cat support, but also because it's a lot easier to support the existing system than get it to change radically.
But one advantage of "true" third parties -- i.e., ones that can get a certain percentage of the legislative power in a PR system -- may be that they can more easily organize themselves as stable, long-lasting bodies, whereas organizations that are basically only pressure groups, as in the U.S., tend to fall apart once they achieve a few successes. OTOH (there is always another hand), true third parties also risk getting "institutionalized" or even fossilized, while the U.S. pattern of spasmodic pushes from the left does allow fresh blood and new organizational ideas to have a chance of being tried out.
Jon Johanning // jjohanning at igc.org __________________________________ "I believe in seeing two sides to an issue so as I can show the other guy where he is wrong." -- Archie Bunker