Also, the rightward shift on big-ticket items is a global phenomenon, but the overwhelming focus on electing John Kerry has practically eclipsed a long-term perspective on world political economy even from political discussion among leftists. As Carrol says, elections not only demobilize social movements but also depoliticize participants in them.
>And I agree that third party-building that does not take a breather
>once every four years, in tandem with pushing for IRV and/or other
>mechanisms of proportional representation is crucial. I was merely
>musing out loud about the entirely trivial matter of one person's
>voting decision (i.e., mine), taking into account the constrained
>choices of the present.
Yes, from a purely individual point of view, our choices are constrained indeed. Hey, I can't even vote here. :->
That said, unlike many Greens and other advocates of independent political action in the USA, I don't think of Instant Runoff Voting, proportional representation, etc. as intrinsically valuable. If the US power elite ever adopt one or more of electoral reforms in the direction of full representation, they will probably do so in response to militant social movements and stiff electoral challenges that are focused on substantial (as opposed to procedural) demands. In other words, if we get IRV and the like, we'll get them as side effects of deeper social changes.
>All that said, I detect (perhaps wrongly, please advise) a slippage
>away from a profound internationalism in your analysis. While I do
>not believe in categorically subscribing to Chomsky's refrain that
>"small differences translate into big consequences" given US might
>(especially when the character of those differences is one of
>tactics rather than orientation), I do not categorically reject it
>either. What I have my sights trained on (perhaps narrowly) is the
>semi-peripheral peasantry and working class (especially China's
>peasantry and working class) as the global system's
>proto-revolutionary class. Accepting the miserable reality that
>either Bush or Kerry will win the election, which outcome opens up
>the most space for China's sweatshop proletariat, its 200 million
>floating migrants, its downsized SOE toliers, etc. to agitate, to
>organize, to erupt. Bereft of sufficient theoretically-savvy
>empiricial analysis, I certainly don't have the answer, and it is
>entirely possible that the election of one versus another regime in
>the US does not yield an outcome that passes a meaningful
>threshhold, but I think these are the kind of questions that are
>meritorious to pose and to answer among dyed-in-the-wool
>internationalists.
As far as China in particular is concerned, on one hand, the Democratic Party may take a more hands-on approach than the Republican Party does, given the perspective of top officials of organized labor; on the other hand, the Democratic Party is, on the whole, more a party of "free trade" than the Republican Party is. Whether China's workers and peasants will have more space for political organizing with the Democratic or Republican White House in the USA is impossible to answer.
On the whole, though, a constituency that is likely to see the most practical differences between the Democratic and Republican White Houses is Americans of the middle strata -- unionized workers, professionals, etc. -- who also happen to be the most enthusiastic about the Democrats (the rich go for the Republicans, and the majority of the poor either cannot or do not vote). Most of the poorer half of American workers are either directly attacked by the Democratic Party (sometimes more harshly than by the Republican Party, as in the case of Clinton's Welfare Reform) or excluded (legally or socially) from new and old small-ticket social-program benefits that the Democrats still occasionally stand up for. When it comes to foreign policy questions, the Democrats generally share the same goals as the Republicans, using sometimes worse, sometimes better, means than they do.
> >The rich and powerful Democrats are simply making use of the AnybodyButBush
> >rhetoric. They will try to keep and exploit the mailing lists that they
> >built through this election cycle and use it to defend the John Kerry
>>administration from social movements and against any challenges from the
>>left in future election cycles, recycling this cycle's rhetoric and tactics
>>and inventing new ones. The question is how many of rank-and-file Democrats
>>will break company with the Democratic Party elite and how soon they will
>>do so.
>
>Well, yes and no. There are reprehensible figures like Soros (who
>has no qualms about the democratic implications of personally
>bankrolling the "loyal opposition") and his hangers-on (the
>despicable Hollywood liberals, the Al Frankens and Janine Garafalos,
>the makers of _OutFoxed_, etc.), and then there are the avowed "hold
>your nose" ABB'ers, who consciously recognize that after early
>November, the heat must be turned up. You may vigorously disagree
>with the latter crowd, but it is a mistake to conflate them with the
>former.
I don't conflate Soros and the like on one hand and "the avowed 'hold your nose' ABB'ers. I'm saying that the latter are exploited by the former (sometimes literally, as some of them get boondoggled into working for the Democratic Party for free). The former build mailing lists and use them for their own purposes; the latter are simply on the former's mailing lists. -- Yoshie
* Critical Montages: <http://montages.blogspot.com/> * Greens for Nader: <http://greensfornader.net/> * Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/> * OSU-GESO: <http://www.osu-geso.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/>