The fight that has broken out in Respect should be of interest to anybody who is interested in building broad left-wing political parties. If this party had continued to prosper, it would have served as an inspiration to radicals and socialists everywhere–especially in the US where efforts to build an alternative to the Democratic Party, our version of New Labour, have proved exceedingly difficult. While it is possible that Respect might work through its difficulties, it is necessary to figure out what went wrong in order to prevent future such difficulties.
Since the charges and counter-charges defy substantiation, especially from afar, this article will avoid trying to establish who did what to whom. That being said, from the evidence I have seen so far, the crisis seems to be of the sort that grips just about every broad left- wing electoral initiative that “Marxist-Leninist” groups take part in. One of my goals in analyzing the Respect crisis is to try to understand why this is such a chronic disease of the left.
full: <http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2007/11/01/the-crisis-in- respect/>