Ted Winslow wrote:
>
> The idea that "personality is irrelevant" to the "scientific" study
> of social phenomena also isn't Marx's.
I don't believe "science," science, or any other "study" is the relevant context here. The relevant context is the local activist/theorist trying to build up a permanent local extra/electoral organization. Does it matter to that person (or those persons) what the private personality of a third-party candidate is?
Now one can argue persuasively that such local organizers should not bother at all with electoral work, or should focus on local DP politics, or a number of other possibilities (some but not all of which are mutually exclusive). But assuming (as is clearly empirically true in at laeast _some_ local areas) that working in a third-party campaign can be fruitful for the future, does it make any difference for _those_ organizers what the personality (as shown in private) of the third-party candidate is.
What Marx has to say is not relevant one way or the other in this context. Or the relevant factors are contingent to time, place and (perhaps) the personalities of the local organizers.
Carrol