> And the argument against the DP (generally stated) is that it exists to
> absorb and blunt promising reform movements...
-------------------------------------
Two questions: (1) Why do you draw such a sharp dichotomy between the DP and
the reform movements? You seem to only see the party of the Liebermans,
Bidens, and Clintons. Where do the Cindy Sheehans fit in? The mass movements
which develop in the US are in the main composed of people who describe
themselves as liberal Democrats, whose impulses are almost always more
militant than their party and union leaders. Are the reform movements not
the other face of the Democratic party? (2) Why do you assume that the
Sheehans think and act the way they do because they are being somehow
manipulated by the party leadership? This implies a level of docility and
dull-mindedness that doesn't conform to my admittedly limited experience
with liberal Democrats I have met in the US over the years and my wider
association with social democrats in Canada. For example, I don't believe
the ranks abruptly turned from antiwar activity to the presidential campaign
in 2004 because they blindly capitulated to the DLC leadership - your
thesis. I think they came to agree, somewhat reluctantly but as a result of
their own political judgement, that the defeat of Bush was the priority, and
that it would also do more to facilitate an American withdrawal from Iraq
than a summer of demonstrations.
Now you or I may think they reasoned wrongly and have electoralist and pro-capitalist illusions. But these are simply an expression of the level of consciousness of virtually all working people in the advanced capitalist countries today, and that which explains their continued confidence in their leaders. Like many frustrated leftists, you can't seem to accept that the masses - at this stage of history, at any rate - have declined to go beyond the reform of capitalism, which conflicts with your understanding of Marxism. Cinsequently, you attribute each setback not to the reformist consciousness of the masses - which derives from their relatively stable conditions and more sober calculations of the possibilities for change - but to the exogenous "betrayals" of their leaders.
Which really raises a third question; If the masses always allow themselves to be so easily betrayed by their leaders - all these failed mass parties in all of these countries over all these generations - then, by your logic, does this not point to a congenital historical inability on the part of the masses, like those in the Democratic party, to choose the right leadership? Isn't it an illusion to hope, on the basis of your particular reading of history, that the masses can ever take control of their own parties and societies? What would change to allow them do so? Your winning "strategy" to defeat the misleaders that previous generations of revolutionaries haven't considered?
A better, materialist, explanation is that capitalism hasn't yet exhausted its historic potential - whatever the early Marxists might have expected - and it is this which underlies the persistent reformism of the masses rather than any inability on their part to overcome the presumed deceptions of treacherous and repressive leaders. When reform movements fall short, it is because in most cases their participants have concluded - with eyes wide open - that the existing relationship of forces with the employers and the state will not permit further advance and that it is necessary to consolidate their gains or cut their losses. Woe to the leaders who want to push their followers in a direction they don't want to go. Every union and party leader knows that.