[lbo-talk] INSTANT POPULISM: A short history of populism old and new

Alan Rudy alan.rudy at gmail.com
Thu Dec 2 11:17:45 PST 2010


On Thu, Dec 2, 2010 at 9:19 AM, Marv Gandall <marvgand at gmail.com> wrote:


> On 2010-12-02, at 9:06 AM, Alan Rudy wrote:
> > Third, Somebody's position - and, to my surprise, Marv's - appears to me
> to
> > conflate theoretical understanding and real world practice. Its not an
> > internal criticism of a political program to say that its pragmatic
> > activities in a world within which it is not hegemonic ends up being
> > "impure". In real world practice real world political organizations have
> to
> > make problematic and/or contradictory coalitions and/or are only able to
> > grow by means of impurity. Much of this conversation seems to ignore the
> > relationship between theory, practice and struggle under changing
> > conditions.
>
> Not sure what to make of your criticism, Alan. I accept that union-based
> reform parties have to take into account the relationship of forces and the
> electoral and other institutional constraints under which they operate. As
> the social and political weight of their trade union base has shrunk in the
> developed countries, so have the possibilities for reform and the distance
> between them and the conservative parties representing the propertied
> classes.
>
> I think I may have misinterpreted you as accepting what I (perhaps wrongly)
took to be SA's suggestion that the union-based reform parties were Marxist. I don't think they were and so am not sure how they fit in a critique of Marxism for being unable to deal with the problem of high wage skilled workers.



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