[lbo-talk] another TP poll: still whiter, righter, more

[Marv Gandall]

Been following this thread intermittently while busily preparing for an upcoming two month road trip in the US. I don't want to stretch the analogy too far - the conditions   are not the same as those which led to fascism in Germany, at least not yet  - but the discussion does evoke echoes of the far more urgent debate which split the German Marxist left when the Nazis began acquiring a mass base: ie. how serious a threat did they represent, and where to look for potential allies to block them. 

Today's liberal Democrats, in the absence of a socialist movement, are effectively sit-ins for the old social democrats of the SPD. Like the latter, they see the growth of the right as threatening their gains and values and and organizations, and regard attacks on their party in this context as an attack on themselves. Brad and others, however, see trade unionists, women, blacks, and others who continue to support the Obama administration as dupes lacking any consciousness of their political interests. He finds the angry tea party movement more appealing, despite its "contradictions", because he perceives it as incipiently hostile to the system and therefore a more fertile recruiting ground for the left than hapless liberals and social democrats who remain committed to it despite their grievances. Brad isn't the first and won't be the last on the left to suffer from this confusion.

On 2010-04-15, at 1:17 PM, Bhaskar Sunkara wrote:


> Brad wrote:
> 
> I have less faith that we will ever siphon off some of the 27% who
> oppose the TP.  I would venture that they are mostly partisan
> Democrats who I doubt will ever move to the left of that party.  These
> are the folks who think we can tinker with the problems of capitalism.
>  They will follow Obama wherever he leads them. I am beginning to
> think that the 40% has more potential.
> -------------------
> 
> I vigorously contest this.  Self-described liberals with operative
> social democratic politics are just a structural critique away from
> democratic socialism.  The point is to argue to these people that
> basic protections and the welfare state are good, but not good enough.
>  "Progressive" forces are in the tent of the Democratic Party, but
> there's absolutely no reason to say they all reject a radical project,
> because there is hardly a visible socialist opposition movement around
> for them to reject.  The unpoliticized, fine some of them can be "get
> at," but the base of any future democratic socialist movement will be
> liberals (students, etc).  I for one am among the 27 percent and am a
> registered Democrat to boot.