From: Laurence Shute
-clip- To repeat Shane Mage's absolutely correct observation:
>...Trots have been saying it for decades...
No, they've been saying it for generations, since even before the birth of Trotsky ("Trots" here = revolutionary marxists and "Dems" = capitalist-dominated parties)
^^^^^ CB: Actually, to be precise on this point, Marx and Engels ( who I presume Shane is referring to when he say "revolutionary marxists" of generations before Trotsky) did join a liberal bourgeois party with the name "Democratic Party" as a tactic at one point. Lenin wrote about this in an essay on the American situation. I can't find Lenin's essay yet, but when I do I'll bring it here. Lenin contrasts the general difference between the role of Communists in Germany/France and U.S./England. In the former, there is already an advanced labor movement and a need to oppose opportunism. In the latter, he saw a need to build the labor movement and avoid sectarianism, roughly speaking , as I recall.
Of course, we are in a very different concrete situation than in Lenin or Marx's eras. But since the reference was made to earlier generations of Marxists, I mention this.