> Disgusting.
>
> Let me say it once again. The following is my WHOLE argument, made over
> and over again;
>
> 1. We need left cadre in non-electoral politics.
>
> 2. That left cadre must conintue to work year after year, decade after
> decade if necessary, so as to be on the job when a spark ignitges a
> prairie fire.
>
> 3. They can't do that if they keep thinking that the DP is a lesser evil
> or that _anything_, including trivial reforms, can be achieved by
> potential leftists giving themselves to the DP instead.
========================================
What a slander. I wonder if Carrol knows of any far leftists in or around
the political parties supported by the unions and social movements who
haven't been simultaneously involved in in mass campaigns initiated by those
groups outside the political arena. In my own case, when I was active in
Canada's social democratic party, my involvement in what Carrol calls
"non-electoral politics" ran more deeply than my attachment to the NDP.
I supported the NDP because it was where the great majority of those who I campaigned with on the outside converged to try to realize their objectives politically, and I thought it was important to part of that effort as well. But I never had a sense of "giving myself" to the NDP in the way Carrol describes because I had no confidence in that party's ability to bring about any meaningful change. It was a tactical orientation which I justified in accordance with Carrol's maxim: "so as to be on the job when a spark ignites a prairie fire." Only I thought such a fire was more likely to break out and be more intense in the unions, political parties, and other organizations where the most politically conscious sectors of the population were located rather than on the campuses, and that I would be in a better position to exercise leadership than some university professor whose only relationship to these milieus was to contemptuously stand apart from them. I still expect that if and when circumstances change, the changes will be registered first and foremost in the liberal and social democratic parties presently supported by the unions and social movements, and that until then the influence of the left inside or outside of these parties will be very limited.
I'm sure those presently active on the US far left like Julio view their activity among Democrats in much the same way. My strong sense also is that they are much more deeply involved in the mainstream national campaigns around healthcare, amnesty for undocumented workers, the war in Iraq, mortgage relief, etc. than the boisterous internet radicals who shout the loudest for "non-electoral politics". I was especially struck by this last week when one enthusiast, a fan of Carrol's, proposed that the LBO list (!!) take the lead in promoting universal medicare on behalf of all Americans, blissfully unaware of the number of unions and other broadly-based organizations representative within the population have been campaigning on this issue for decades. So socially and politically estranged is the present generation of leftists from the working class that I doubt, for many of them, even knowing of the existence of these organizations and the possibilities to participate in them would translate into any sustained activity.