....Another book that’s very helpful to understanding the realities behind the rhetoric of U.S. foreign policy is Andrew Bacevich’s American Empire. This book, largely overlooked when it appeared in 2002, shows how all the pieties of the Clinton years--from "humanitarian intervention" to military management of foreign policy--helped pave the way for Bush’s aggressive "war on terrorism." Bacevich shows the Democrats have far more in common with the Republicans than either would admit.
Of course the Democrats will spend the next year trying to convince millions of the opposite. That’s why the 1976 debate between Peter Camejo and Michael Harrington in The Lesser Evil? along with other material in the book, is well worth reading. Although the names and dates are different, many of the arguments are the same today.
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Lesser Evil?: The Left Debates the Democratic Party and Social Change by Peter Camejo, Jack Barnes, Carl Haessler, Michael Harrington, Stanley Aronowitz
Review #1 Ranking 5 What strategy is needed to advance the cause of the working class and progressive people? Since Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1930s, many labor, Black, and other progressive movements have supported the "lesser evil" -- usually the Democratic party candidate. Debated here is whether working people should dump this course and seek instead to replace the system which is alternatively administered by "lesser evil" Democrats and "greater evil" Republicans. Read the book and consider the consequences of "coalitionism" vs. independent working class political action. Review #2 Ranking 5 Eugene V. Debs the socialist revolutionist was fond of saving, "it is better to vote for what you want and not get it, than to vote for what you don't want and get it." Malcolm X was fond of simply pointing out that at every key point in the history of Black people, the Democratic party "has sold us out." This book explains why real revolutionists are trying to chart a course of indepedence for workers, farmers, and the oppressed from the twin parties of capitalism, the Demnocrats and the Republicans. Can the Republicans and the Democrats help us. Or do we need some new kind of party like the Green party, whichis a more liberal or more progressive party but still built on the model of the Democrats and the Republicans. The responses that leaders of the Socialist Workers Party give here to people who believe that working people can work in the Democratic party or build other capitalist political parties answer these questions. They point out that the fundamental problem in this society is not liberal ideas or non liberal ideas, but the existence of a capitalist class, the big corporate leaders, and a capitalist system. They explain that politics is a question of taking power out the hands of those people and that system.
Review #3 Ranking 5 This book chronicles a series of debates between supporters of the Democratic and Republican parties and leaders of the Socialist Workers party who believe that working class people, Blacks, Chicanos, Puerto Ricans, women, and all who fight for change need to break from the Republican and Democratic parties and the wanna be capitalist parties like the Greens to form a working class political party, a labor party, a party that can fight for power to be placed in the hands of workers and farmers in this country and the world. Its simple, a system is something that seeks to preserve itself. The SWPers demonstrate that Democratic party and other capitalist parties are part of the capitalism system and are not vehicles for liberation, but traps
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