> Marvin Gandall wrote:
>> It's mistaken - or, more likely in your case, a deliberate distortion -
>> to
>> paste the label of "DP supporters" on the foreheads of those US leftists
>> who
>> suggest that it is more productive to develop relationships with the
>> larger
>> mass of Democratic activists rather than with the Green party and
>> assorted
>> socialist groups who are less representative of the US working class and
>> subsist on the margins of American political life.
> If that isn't supporting the DP I don't know what support from the left
> could mean?
===================================
This is analogous to saying that when Lenin called on British Communists to
join and vote for the Labour Party in order to engage with the most
politically conscious workers who were still concentrated in that party -
the Cindy Sheehans of his day, you might say - he was a "Labour Party
supporter", ie. a social democrat.
There was, you may recall, a vociferous faction of the Communist Party of Great Britain which vigorously opposed Lenin's orientation to the Labour party rank and file. They tried to educate him about the "treacherous" leadership of the party and its "counter-revolutionary" direction and the need to build an independent left to challenge it. You would have felt right at home in this faction. Lenin, of course, really didn't need educating about that aspect of the Labour Party. He thought the left could only be built by going through it, the answer he gave to his critics the famous "Left Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder."
In retrospect, however, it seems clear that both Lenin and his opponents could have done with a little less certainty and a little more humility. Neither "entry" into workers-based parties nor frontal assault from the outside (the frustrated far left zigged and zagged wildly between the two tactics in many countries in the succeeding generations after Lenin) were able to shake the traditional reformist party loyalties of the workers. A revolutionary crisis would be required to test the validity of the rival hypotheses. That's something the US left - divided between those who "enter" the DP, those who "enter" the Greens, and those who effectively abstain from electoral activity like yourself - might bear in mind when the temperature rises at election time.
Meantime, I hope all goes well with your elbow.