> History shows us that the Democrats and the Republicans are the
> enemies of the working class. If anybody on this list can't see that,
> then they are true believers who won't be swayed by the evidence.
Sure, they're both "enemies of the working class," by definition, since the system is a capitalist one, which is inimical to workers in itself, and they are both committed to maintaining the system.
But that doesn't mean that they are both equally bad for workers. When the New Deal was being created and maintained, the Democrats were definitely less inimical to the working class, or more friendly, whichever way you want to look at it, than the Republican Party. The question is whether it makes more sense for the U.S. left to put a lot of effort into trying to get the DP back to that situation, or to put its energy into trying to create a "pure" working-class political force that would attack the system itself.
I'm inclined to think that the latter course is not terribly practical at this point, given that the U.S. working class was not ready to overthrow the system even in the 1930s, when the motivation for doing so was a lot more potent than it is now. But I'm always open to considering the pure working-class party idea, since conditions can always change. If masses of Americans got disgusted with the DP leadership (and it certainly is pretty awful), they might move toward overthrowing that leadership and taking the party in a more radical direction. I think that is much more likely than these masses deciding to create a whole new party, but my crystal ball is much cloudier than those of a lot of other LBO list members, apparently.
On Dec 15, 2004, at 7:13 AM, Lance Murdoch wrote:
> Bill Clinton is inspirational. Ronald Reagan was inspirational. If
> you're looking for style, not substance, people like UMW president
> Arnold Miller are not inspirational at all. But I find Nader and
> Miller very inspirational because they said and did all of the right
> things. Who do you find inspirational - John Kerry? Al Gore?
The question is not who we hard-bitten leftist few find inspirational. What is needed is a candidate who inspires a majority of voters *and* has the intention to try to move the country in the right direction. I doubt that such a person is going to pop up in the next four years, so we will probably be faced with another muddy, unsatisfactory situation in 2008. Life is just a bowl of cherry pits. But in 10 or 20 years, things may be different.
Jon Johanning // jjohanning at igc.org _____________________________ "Simply by being human we do not have a common bond. For all we share with all other humans is the same thing we share with all other animals -- the ability to feel pain." -- Richard Rorty