Nader Goes Buchananite (Re: [lbo-talk] Vote Nader/Camejo 2004!

Carrol Cox cbcox at ilstu.edu
Tue Jun 22 12:31:22 PDT 2004


Per Fagereng wrote:
>
> What is a progressive position on immigration? Open borders? Some kind
> of controls? If so, what controls?
>

Actually, open borders probably _is_ the progressive position -- but this argument either misunderstands or deliberately misstates the grounds for supporting Nader.

Those attacking Nader are for the most part adherents of the ABB position: Anybody but Bush. But they simply refuse to recognize the core argument for Nader: Anybody but the DP (or of course RP). And the reason for this position is the conviction that over even over a relatively short range and even in strictly reformist terms tose who are committed to a mass movement _must_ oppose the DP, since that party's reason for existence is to prevent the growth of such mass movements. Oppose The Party -- not just cherry pick among DP candidates.

The DP exists to be a barrier to the growth of mass politicization. The "left wing" of the DP (e.g., the late Senator Wellstone, the current DP candidate for the Senate in Illinois) exist (whether they know it or not) to give a patina of respectability to the DP.

Now Nader represents an alternative to Kerry (i.e., to the DP), just as for ABBs Kerry represents an alternative to Bush. ABBs often speak of holding their noses as they vote for a candidate whose views will very possibly (probably) become u.s. policy in 2005. But then those same ABBs squeak and whine and roar that since Nader is not perfectly pure in his politics he shouldn't be supported!

A Nader vote is a vote _against_: against the suppression of politics by the DP/RP. And as long as to several million people Nader is _regarded_ as progressive, a vote for him is a vote for building a mass progressive movement, not a vote for every position Nader may take.

Why do the Nader-Haters think they can get away with this bullshit? I have a pure speculation. Nader-baiting is at least a first cousin of (or temporary stand-in for) red-baiting. And one of the central planks of the red-baiter's creed is that communists (or even liberals who have wandered from the narrow path of liberal virtue) are motivated by a lust for "purity." If this delusion (more often probably a self-conscious lie for rhetorical effect) were valid, then Nader-voters are (supposedly) betraying their own principle of Purity by supporting such an impure candidate.

The route to a mass movement to reverse the conservative trend of the last 35 years is through a refusal any longer to pick and choose among the candidates the ruling class offers us. Nader is a (temporary) weapon in the service of that refusal; one might say that the Nader/Green campaign offers (at the very least) a thermometer for taking the temperature of the electorate at this time. Not the best one could imagine, but the best events have offered us. We would be fools not to wield it.

Carrol



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