>>Who ever said the Dems were anti-capitalist? Not me for sure. They're
>>a bourgeois party. They are under pressure from their constituency to
>>act otherwise sometimes, and talk otherwise somewhat more often. It
>>pays to acknowledge the difference if you want to talk to people
>>outside the far left. That's all I'm saying.
If everybody here knows that the Dems aren't anti-capitalist, then why are people saying that there is a difference between them and the Republicans?
Why would you deny the parties being the same thing when you talk to people outside of the Left?
>>And I'll bet that if Hillary's elected many of the people who think
>>there's a big difference between the parties will be massively
>>disappointed, though it might take them a year to admit it. That's
>>why it's better for radical politics to have Dems in office. They're
>>a wonderful catalyst for radicalizing disillusionment.
This has been an argument that progressives have been making for years.
Where are all of the radicals?
Perhaps we're losing these new radicals because we aren't organizing something for them to plug into. They go and join stupid shit like the 9/11 movement.
John Thornton wrote:
> This is just Chuck setting straw men alight again.
No, this is just Chuck the anarchist making a rather tired argument that there is no difference between the two political parties. This isn't even controversial on this list. I think everybody understands that the parties are the same, but we just don't know what to do to effect the social change we want to see.
Some of you think that there is some value in working within the Democrats. Others are for third parties. Some are waiting for the "right conditions." I'm one of those who isn't religious about the "right conditions" and instead operate with the idea that people have free will and agency and thus can change things. I also think that the main reason why the Left doesn't do anything is because it has experienced a collective failure of will.
We know what to do, but our comrades won't do anything.
> No one on this list ever said they believed the Dems were anti-Capital.
> If anyone has a citation to prove otherwise please post it.
That wasn't my point. I said that there isn't any fundamental difference between the two parties, when viewed from our political standpoint. They are both imperialist parties. They are both pro-capitalist. And so on.
> No one said the differences were fundamental. Again, if anyone has a
> citation to prove otherwise please post it.
We're not having some kind of legal argument here.
> What has been said was that the differences were real enough to make
> incremental differences in real peoples lives. Not huge structural
> differences but real differences nonetheless.
I understand that, but my argument is that you can't achieve real differences unless you are going with your more radical game plan. The people with power do not move until the prospect of radical change scares them. The Democrats promised ua universal health care in 1992. Progressives urged us to vote for the Democrats, not just on universal health care, but for abortion rights. Not only did we not get health care, but Clinton chipped away at women's reproductive rights around the world.
> Chuck has stated there is no difference between the parties and then at
> times admits there is some small difference, like he does above.
> Chuck is a decent writer and seems to have much energy but consistency
> is not his strong point in a discussion.
My arguments here are consistent. Over time, I'm not going to be consistent, as I post here in a variety of frames of mind. Nobody here is going to be consistent over several years of discussions. My posts on this topic this week have been half-hearted. I was trying to avoid even posting anything this year on the 2008 elections.
> Chuck seems to forget (or not care) that what you write is true, Dems in
> office help drive people who are left of center to disappointment.
Maybe. The "truth" of this assertion requires more evidence. This sounds logical. It's a weird argument for supporting the Democrats. I just don't see this as being a significant phenomenon. Clinton did not create thousands or millions of new radicals.
To me, it seems like progressives and liberals just won't face the reality of how pathetic the Democrats are.
> Voting to put Dems in office gives radicals more room to move and
> increases the width of a receptive audience. Disappointed people are a
> receptive audience.
I disagree.
> Chuck loves to bring up Seattle again and again but the reality is
> having Clinton in office made Seattle possible just as the Vietnam
> anti-war movement grew most rapidly under Johnson. Protests dropped
> shortly after Nixon took office. Yes, Kent State had much to do with
> that but Kent State didn't happen under Nixon rather than Johnson by
> arbitrary happenstance.
I also disagree with this. For starters, this is based on the dubious argument that historical conditions make movements, not people acting to make movements. This argument denies the agency of the thousands of people involved in the Seattle movement as well as all of the hard work we did to make those protests happen. We weren't organizing because Clinton being in office made things easier. If anything, having Democrats in office makes it hard to motivate progressives to do activism and organize protests.
I also disagree that Kent State was responsible for the drop in protests, which actually kept happening for several years. If anything caused the drop in visible anti-war protests during that era, it was demographics. The generation that was in college got older, finished college and started working careers and starting families. This demographic phenomenon also explains the decline in protests in recent years. 9/11 was a factor, but wasn't as big a factor as people think. A movement with lots of young people is always going to experience these demographic factors at some point.
Chuck