No, liberals believe in the Utopian project of liberal capitalism. The tinkering around is all done on the periphery issues, the
capitalism part is not up for debate with most of them. They will spend endlessly and work tirelessly to make capitalism work. ----------------------------
Let me get this straight, the 27 percent of people with enough commonsense to oppose Tea Party bile are completely discounted in your view, since you know a tremendous about the private thoughts of these folks (what they think about capitalism, how their views are immutable and how their view wouldn't be influenced by a visible left). But you, like me, also feel compelled to label "leftists" who have harsh things to say about right-wingers as this country as being elitist and vitriolic.
Brad wrote:
I am pretty sure that everyone here would agree with this...Lenin's point it would seem to me is that without a party some of the working class will be reactionary and conservative. It is the job of this party to overcome this through struggle. The view that we need a pure left movement before we can start anything has proven disastrous for the left. ----------------------------
No, that's Lenin through your own lens. Lenin hardly thought that the working class was inherently "reactionary" or conservative. His point is that without organs of class struggle, whose highest manifestation is the communist Party, the working class is impotent and inchoate. If left-leaders and theoreticians can't envision or even discuss an organizational framework that could allow 15,000 active socialist cadre to coexist and operate together without splintering in a thousand different directions, why should we take seriously anything these people have to say about their aspirations to socially and politically revolutionize a world of 7 billion? A step back from the philosophical and the academic and into the realms of politics and economics would be refreshing, yet I see few people besides of Macnair and his cohorts in the UK and Bill Fletcher in the US talking about revolutionary strategy and political organization. Assuming such a socialist formation is possible, then yes, there is the question from Kautsky's day of an "Erfurtian" merger between the class conscious socialist movement and a portion of the broader "workers' movement." After that it's the patient working of sustaining a visible opposition movement with the help of a small minority of the population. Ralph Nader 2000 levels of support would alone drastically alter the political paradigm. Anyway, you're last statement is sweeping and unsubstantiated. I'd like to hear the alternative to this proposal. More sects working through front works and helping social movements from below, while disguising their radical politics? Slowly building their ranks to become even larger sects until eventually, at some point in the indeterminate future they have enough cadre to be a real political force?