> On May 21, 2008, at 3:12 PM, Jerry Monaco wrote:
>
>> But why specifically the Electoral College? And the state by state
>> guesses
>> of Rove? What does this get you in understanding intra-ruling class
>> politics?
>
> The r.c. does have to win elections, and to win elections, they have
> to play demographics and geography. It's interesting to me. It also
> provides insight into how utterly marginal radical/third party
> politics are right now, and offers some idea of how one might do it
> better.
============================
Actually, elections are a good register of "intra-ruling class politics" -
one of the best ways we have of examining the range and degree of domestic
and foreign policy differences between the liberal and conservative wings of
the bourgeoisie, as well as the political mood of the population which gets
to choose between them.
In the US, the Democrats represent the interests of the liberal wing of the ruling class in much the same manner as social democrats do elsewhere, drawing core electoral support in each case from urban workers and the various social protest groups. The Republicans represent the conservative wing of the ruling class with a social base and programme similar to that of other right-wing electoral parties. The social, cultural, economic, and political issues which divde the supporters of each party from the other aren't trivial (social spending, abortion, Iraq, trade unions, gay rights, public schooling, environmental regulation, civil liberties, etc.) and they don't share the blase attitude about the electoral outcome as those watching from the outside.
Many of us are watching from the outside because the parties we once supported have disappeared. There are no longer any mass anticapitalist parties independent of the ruling class. Intra- rather than inter-class conflict has become a more important determinant of political change. So for those of us who have retained an interest in mass politics even in it's decayed state, it's understandable that elections and following the financial press would also assume a greater importance than the activities of the tiny left-wing groups and their publications who bear scant resemblance to the great historic movements from which they're descended.