"I know of no other left entity, other than Chomsky, that comes within a mile of rivaling the MR contribution to explaining the working of capitalism, both at the top and the bottom of the system."
Since many on this list have mentioned the Monthly Review amidst a slew of intellectual esoterica, thought I'd take an opportunistic moment to ask for your inputs for an article I'm trying to prepare for that publication. I've been encouraged by an MR insider to do something on the rise and decline of the Labor Party (LP). That's the thing that a couple of the more advanced small unions like Oil, Chemical, & Atomic and United Electrical put together with the dedicated shepherding of the late Tony Mazzocchi (damn, everybody dies) and was officially born in 1996 by 1400 mostly-union delegates at Cleveland who created a vision and program clearly to the left of the New Deal.
I've been mourning the party's decline since about 2000. Unlike the death mourning for my comrade wife the following year, my Labor Party mourning is more a Dylan-type dialectic of "busy being reborn to keep from dying." My political-intellectual purpose, which seems like an overwhelming task, is to explain the LP's emergence in the early 90s; then it's spurt in growth for nearly 10 years, which resulted in union endorsements technically representing two million members along with 50 community chapters (at least on paper) spread across the U. S.; and then a quick decline.
I also hope to contribute to the arguably inevitable next phase in the development of a left party coming out of a constantly changing U. S. working class. If better understood, perhaps past mistakes, omissions, and misunderstandings can be rectified in later efforts. I have no doubt that the LP was a small opening salvo in the coming protracted class war. And I have no doubt of the inherent validity of a working class party, strongly based in unions and the community.
I'm trying to design an honest and balanced study that may help us understand the internal dynamics of the LP (it's administration and organization, the unions, the grass roots, the "left, etc), in the political economy of the 90s. My data comes from experience (seven years of LP activism around the country), archives, and interviews. Archivally, I've found little written on the LP, and I've been hunting a lot. There was but a tiny flurry of discussion in LBO archives. Recent books on the labor movement don't reference this most recent example in the credible history of U. S. labor parties. Maybe that says partly that the LP was never seen as worth writing about because it never seriously took off, or that the LP leaders decided against writing criticism, self-criticism (perhaps analysis is a better term on the current list) on a political body that's still around. Anyway, I'm locating and interviewing some of the party's founders and leaders, some with whom I've had past contact.
Some on this list may have thoughts, references, or experience they might share either on or off line. I know that some were close to the LP, at least in spirit. The idea of a labor party today - in the midst of poor role models abroad, corrupted business unionists, scorn for third parties, or whatever other negatives that can quite easily be dredged up - may pre-empt some of your creative ideas. It's possible your mind may focus on American exceptionalism or "it wasn't the right historical time," and things like that. Try them out if you wish, and I will be grateful. But I hope you also will think of things like union-community cooperation, the rank 'n file, the grass roots, and long range organizing imperatives. Can't say that LBO will win many awards for its "practical" approach to political economy (the merits of Canadian coffee don't count). But I'm a simple, practical man.
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