> no, it was a reaction to your claim that we do nothing and lack of
> political participation is, apparently, solely the result of the
> individual's selfish, apathetic decision-making. i'm actually the kind
> of person who enjoys doing the grunt work since it can fit more easily
> into my schedule. i think it's bizarre that you assume jon does
> nothing. why should you assume that? and even if he does, maybe he's
> put in his time and would like a break. maybe he's taking care of an
> ill partner or child or who knows what he or anyone else here might be
> doing.
Good guesses, but not quite right. Basically, I'm having to work a lot of extra time to pay debts, etc. (Hence the delay in answering this post, as well as my inability to go out and ring many doorbells.) Another reason, as I said, was that I'm not really temperamentally fit for organizing small parties -- I did some of that in the 60s/70s, but frankly would rather leave it to folks like you who enjoy it.
But the biggest reason is that I don't see any nascent 3rd parties around, including the Greens, that I think are going to go anywhere anytime soon. However, I'm glad John H. and others are running on the Green ticket for local offices. I think the thing to do for such parties is to build local bases in as many places as possible before trying to run for national office (even senatorial races are probably premature at this point).
Of course, the problem with this strategy is that while people are doing their organizing on the local level, the national and international level is going completely down the drain -- wars without end, the Gulf Stream about to disappear due to global warming so that half the earth suddenly shifts to a new ice age (or so I hear), etc. So everyone feels the urgency to act on that level, even though a " mass political party rooted in a mass social movement," which is the mantra of Yoshie and other listers, will probably not appear in my lifetime (and I expect to have a few decades to go yet). And as Chuck notes in his very informative post about the Bay Area struggles, somebody has to be constantly working to keep the local situations from degenerating.
In other words, the whole anti-capitalist left in the U.S. at this point is obviously swimming against the tide, and it's a pretty powerful tide. In still other words, the "objective conditions" for this movement are just not here, meaning that the conditions that would induce a mass of Americans to fight the system don't obtain.
I wish the "objective conditions" did obtain -- I really do. I hate like hell living in a situation without these conditions. But I don't have a magic wand which could create them by November, which is why I think we need to vote against Bush and *also* keep plugging on the alternative politics project, each in the best way she or he can. Organizing alternative politics locally is one way of continuously probing to see how the objective conditions for building the mass base are coming, as well as gradually forming that base itself. Without that probing and forming, of course, no one knows whether the base exists, so we run the danger of complacency -- ignoring a real potential for the formation of the base. Therefore, 3rd-party activism is very important, even without the mass base, but you can't just wish that base into existence.
> further, i don't see why anyone should be expected to get involved in
> third party politics if they are doing other things they think are
> important: e.g., union organizing, fighting police violence, clinic
> defense, etc.
That's true too. Other types of organizing are just as important as 3rd-party stuff. I remember the reply of David Dellinger, the nonviolent activist of the Vietnam War era, when he was asked which was more important: organizing the national demonstrations ("Mobilizations" they were called) each spring and fall in SF and DC or local anti-war organizing. His answer was, "Which is more important, inhaling or exhaling?" Similarly, we have to do *both* 3rd-party organizing and other kinds (as well as reading and thinking, as Doug's/Lisa's/Christian's paper argues). Overthrowing the system requires many kinds of activities; I don't agree with anyone who says that their own preferred activity is the *only* one to do (even though I recognize that, with the job so huge and the workers so few, everyone wants desperately to convince as many people as they can to join *their* thing).
Jon Johanning // jjohanning at igc.org __________________________________ A gentleman haranguing on the perfection of our law, and that it was equally open to the poor and the rich, was answered by another, 'So is the London Tavern.' -- "Tom Paine's Jests..." (1794); also attr. to John Horne Tooke (1736-1812) by Hazlitt