[lbo-talk] Dean: candidate of the far left

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Fri Jan 9 11:26:54 PST 2004


<http://www.michaelberube.com/>

Jan 08, 2004

It's not just GOP lies and nonsense- Dean really is the candidate of the far left!

After seeing that "Club for Growth" attack ad on Howard Dean, I began to wonder: am I living in a right-wingnut fantasy world where George Bush is a "compassionate conservative" and liberal-centrists like Dean are part of a "left-wing freak show"? Then I came across the following news item, and I realized, no, the Club for Growth has it right. So OK, I can admit it when I'm mistaken. Check it out:

Muscatine, Iowa (Rooters)-- ?Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean today accepted the endorsement of the Workers World Party, declaring that the time had come "for black and white to unite and fight for a Worker's World." Together with his endorsements by the International Socialist Organization, the Spartacist League, the Revolutionary Communist Party, and the International Committee to Defend Slobodan Milosevic, the WWP announcement appeared to solidify Dean's standing as the candidate of the far left. "It is not enough to roll back George Bush's tax cuts and take back America," Dean said at a campaign stop in Ames, Iowa. "These petty-bourgeois reform measures serve ultimately to legitimate the regime of global capital and US imperialism. Rather, we must work at the very roots themselves, until the system of private property is abolished and the left's long march through the institutions is completed." When pressed on the critical question of "worker's councils" as opposed to the formation of a "revolutionary vanguard," however, Dean seemed to waffle, and his hesitation was immediately criticized by his Democratic rivals, especially Joseph Lieberman, who accused Dean of having "gone down the spider hole of crypto-anarcho-syndicalism," and John Kerry, who insisted that a Democratic candidate who refused to endorse revolutionary worker's councils would be "unelectable" against George Bush in November.

Posted by: Michael on Jan 08, 2004



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