History is what's missing in US politics. It's as though the struggle against the Vietnam War never happened for liberals and a large section of leftists in the USA, to say nothing of those who do not identify themselves as either, the only historical memory from the era being a considerable degree of sentiments against the draft across the political spectrum -- the sentiments held for various reasons.
The absence of historical memory is mainly due to objective conditions, but, at least to a small extent, decisions made by leftists of the Vietnam War era probably contributed to it:
<blockquote>The SWP had only ca. 400 members in the early 60s. The party understood that it had to work with antiwar Democrats, pacifists, Stalinists and union bureaucrats if it was to build a movement with the numbers required to stop the war."
While it criticized antiwar Democrats in its weekly, which few outside its ranks read, its peace group, the National Peace Action Coalition, never did. In the interest of unity, NPAC went no further than making sure that the giant demos didn't adapt to the liberals' Democratic electoral orientation. (Lenni Brenner, "When Cattle Unite, Lions Go Hungry: Whatever Happened to the Last Radical in Berkeley to Take Off His Tie?" <em>CounterPunch</em> <a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/brenner07172004.html">July 17/18, 2004</a>)</blockquote>
To a large extent, the WWP replicated the function played by the SWP in the anti-Vietnam War movement, at least from the time of the movement against the Gulf War till recently. Not surprisingly, the WWP fell apart this year, the split caused by its own failure to educate its own members and others who attended its events as to the nature of the Democratic Party (if I may trust a few reports on the WWP's split published here and there).
To be fair to the SWP and the WWP, what I'm saying above is easier said than done, but we need to learn from failures in the past -- including the very recent past -- if we do not want to doom ourselves to repeating the same political cycle again and again.
>The radical left fears that it is marginal and powerless, so it
>falls for the poverty of supporting the Democrats. I'm just glad
>that I'm not officially part of the left in that sense.
When you first brought up the term "post-left," my instinct was against the term, as I felt that there were already too many post-this and post-that, but observing the roles of leftists in the USA today, I now think that perhaps the term is not without its own usefulness.
BklynMagus magcomm at ix.netcom.com, Sun Jul 18 20:16:51 PDT 2004, [lbo-talk] Re: What the Ruling Class Want to Get: A Green Light:
>Also, since Nader has solicited the support of Reoublicans and the
>Reform Party, could votes for him be read as coming from leftists?
In many states where neither the Green Party nor the Reform Party has ballot lines, Americans on the left may not have anyone on the ballot that they can vote for, so they might vote for the Libertarian Party (which has more ballot lines than either of the above) or (more likely) abstain from voting altogether.
joanna bujes jbujes at covad.net, Sun Jul 18 23:58:42 PDT 2004, [lbo-talk] LBO-talk Fundrace, the Second Amendment, Etc.:
>The only argument I remember
Your memory is selective, about the Anybody But Bush and Nader argument and everything else besides in your posting. Nothing surprising about that, though. In any event, you are entitled to equality before the law, but you are not entitled to my suspension of political judgment, as long as you claim to be a political person on the left (unlike most of the American public to whom you have repeatedly expressed that you feel superior), but perhaps you are saying that I should judge your words and deeds just as I judge, say, my partner's brother-in-law (generally Republican, not at all politically active as far as I can see, and a very nice guy indeed). -- Yoshie
* Critical Montages: <http://montages.blogspot.com/> * Greens for Nader: <http://greensfornader.net/> * Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/> * Calendars of Events in Columbus: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html>, <http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/> * Student International Forum: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>