>The argument would make at least some sense if 2004 were the first
>year when the United States made a transition from feudal monarchy or
>dictatorship or something like that to bourgeois democracy. Then,
>without sounding apologetic, you could make an argument that people
>need to learn through their own experiences of the limits of
>bourgeois political parties before getting to the stage of building
>the political party of the working class and our allies.
Well, people in the USSR are having to learn that and they had a revolution almost 80 years ago. So I don't know that these things march in a straight line. And their learning about all that is related to our having to learn about what our ruling class is like without a substantial counterforce.
>We are
>living at the dawn of the 21st century, not of the 20th century,
>however. By now, the Americans have had more than enough direct
>experience of both the Democratic and Republican Parties. By now, so
>many Americans have had all their hopes dashed by the inevitably
>miserable performances of the past Democratic administrations that
>nearly half the eligible electorate do not bother to vote in a
>presidential election year!
OK, we should be in a different place than we are, but so what? We're not there, we're here, so the question is how to deal with it. There's a difference between (a) total alienation from politics of all kinds and (b) resistance against the D&R parties evidenced by not voting. We have to go from (a) to (b) an not assume that everyone's at (b).
I'll post my article Yoshie mentions. It's a bit long for a list but IPPN hasn't yet got the issue on their website.
Jenny Brown