David McReynolds, a Socialist Party cadre since the early 1950's
'sez...
http://www.columbia.edu/~lnp3/msg55804.html
> ...First, "there is no difference between the two
major parties" (a position Peter Camejo has
argued with vigor, and which is shared by many in
the Socialist Party). This position is nonsense.
There are major differences between the two major
parties and, more important, vast differences
within them. In terms of basic political science
neither major party is a "party" of agreed
principles. Both major parties are collections of
regional interests, and usually the greatest
differences are between regions, not within the
parties themselves.
One example was the old New Deal which FDR put together. This brought together a racist group of Southern Democrats with the big city bosses of the North, backed by the emerging trade union movement. That coalition ruled the country until 1952. Despite the clear racism of the Southern Democrats, the Democratic Party was the party of Northern liberals, and of most of those in the black community. In Northern states the Republican Party was often very close to the Democrats on Civil Rights issues. In Southern states the Republican Party, as it gradually made inroads on the old solid Democratic South, didn't do so by challenging the racism of Southern Democrats, but by echoing it.
The AFL-CIO found its home in the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party has been the arena of the Civil Rights movement, the Women's movement, the Peace movement, and the Gay/Lesbian movement. We can deplore this, but it won't change the facts. Within the African American community there has been sharp tension over the fact that the Democrats take the black vote for granted - yet every effort to form some kind of ongoing "black political party" has failed. This is also painfully true of the labor movement, where the efforts to form a Labor Party have not taken hold. And despite the fact that the Democratic Party has historically been the "war party" - up until Reagan - the broad liberal peace movement has functioned in and around liberal members of Congress - some of whom have been exceptionally good and decent people - as some Republicans have also been. (It is, I note in passing, an irony, and not a happy one, that the Republicans have become the "war party". Historically if the ruling class wanted to have a war it need to have in power that party most likely to have the allegiance of working people. It is ominous that, to a great extent, the Republicans now have the allegiance of a large segment of the lower income groups, and have been able to moblize large parts of the public behind war policies from Reagan through to the present).
The efforts by Socialists or Greens to insist there are no differences between the two parties, or that it doesn't make any difference whether Kerry or Bush wins the election, defies commonsense. (Which is one reason the left has so little impact in the country as a whole - people perceive their own immediate interests better than we do. One reason many on the left are irritated by Michael Moore is because he has spoken the truth on this, reminding us that we don't really speak for or understanding working class Americans). <SNIP>
-- Michael Pugliese