> The strategic problem here is that electoral
> politics is not just a "weapon" that the working class can use to
> further their interests; it is also (and more often!) a weapon used
> against them by the very Democratic pols they supported (Clinton is the
> obvious example). Thus I'm not convinced that electoral politics is an
> effective "weapon drawn from society as it is" for the working class.
Every historically given organization, political formation, form of struggle, technology, piece of knowledge, social structure, anything that may result from the application of humans' conscious efforts -- in a phrase, any given vessel of the productive force of labor -- can in principle be turned against us. That is what alienation and exploitation are all about:
Our work, the products of our work, including the social structures that get fixed through our work, escape our control, become oppressive forces, bite us in the back. Our vote, the products of our activism and involvement, including the resulting political structures, escape our control, become oppressive forces, bite us in the back. The struggle against alienation consists precisely of painstakingly re-appropriating our labor, the products of our labor, the fruits of our activism, the results of our social involvement, the social structures that arise from our activity, to place them under our control to serve our collective needs. Of course, we cannot have the product without the process that produces it. The product of a struggle cannot be its precondition.
To say that we cannot use X in our struggle until X is given to us, free of warts, to serve our needs and only our needs, is effectively a not-very-elegant way to give up on the struggle. Because, if we exclude miracles, X will never fall from the sky perfect and ready to serve our needs. So, the idea that electoral politics is always a stick that hit us on the head is no argument against electoral politics. Again, the only forms of struggle that we can use are those drawn from society as it is. And it's only through that very struggle that we will refine or, if/when necessary, replace the existing means of struggle with better ones, fitter for more ambitious tasks, just as we transform ourselves into better social fighters and as we transform the very conditions in which we work and live.
> That said, McCain is pretty fucking scary, so I probably end up
> supporting the Obama campaign. But I have no illusions that this will
> be some artful strategy to further working class interests.
Right. It's hard to avoid illusions, but try we must.
> Other means of struggle? For one, expand existing socialist forms of
> production (e.g., open source software, public libraries, child care
> co-ops). As I noted a while ago, think of these small socialist
> projects as indigenous plants growing up through the cracks in the concrete.
None of these are, in principle, mutually exclusive with electoral politics. How do I know? My wife is an assistant to the principal in one of the toughest public schools in Brooklyn, 3 years ago she started a child care co-op in our neighborhood that is still operating, she is pretty active in a host of neighborhood issues (we live in an old formerly-Scandinavian co-op in Sunset Park, that she's served repeatedly as a director), and she's n times more active in the Obama campaign than I am. So I know.