[lbo-talk] Engels on third parties in the USA

Yoshie Furuhashi critical.montages at gmail.com
Fri Oct 20 13:31:01 PDT 2006


On 10/20/06, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
> [I've read this before, but recently came across it again. It seems
> as true now as it was 114 years ago.]
>
> <http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1892/letters/92_01_06.htm>
>
> Engels to Sorge
<snip>
> Land is the
> basis of speculation, and the American speculative mania and
> speculative opportunity are the chief levers that hold the native-
> born worker in bondage to the bourgeoisie.
<snip>
> The small farmer and the petty bourgeois will hardly ever succeed in
> forming a strong party
<snip>
> immigration and bankruptcy promote the change in personnel

The housing boom is at the beginning of its end; small farmers are mostly gone; and bankruptcy has been "reformed," to the detriment of middle strata. Immigrants are still numerous, but that's a plus for any potential movement on the Left here, as US history shows us, as well as demos and strikes for immigrant rights this year, the only mass working-class protests in recent memory. Add to them the Iraq War, which is likely to go on for at least four more years (cf. <http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15228265/>), and other adventures of Washington. All in all, objective conditions are not unpromising. The problems are subjective and organizational.

On 10/20/06, James Heartfield <Heartfield at blueyonder.co.uk> complained of Herbert Aptheker:
> Aptheker disguised the underlying reformism he was committed to in the
> present with a rhetorical leftism in the history of slavery.

Now, this tendency to mask an "underlying reformism" with a "rhetorical leftism" on this or that issue is widespread indeed, far from being confined to the CPUSA, as one can see on LBO-talk, except that it is not even an "underlying reformism" any more -- it's just an underlying acquiescence to the Democratic Party which isn't even reformist. It's not clear what can be done to change that underlying tendency among a large majority of US leftists and their actual and potential constituencies. -- Yoshie <http://montages.blogspot.com/> <http://mrzine.org> <http://monthlyreview.org/>



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