[lbo-talk] March 4

[Bhaskar Sunkara]

Largely agreed, as long as we are acknowledging that Carrol's fundamental
point is correct (about the class nature of Obama and company) --- though
those that often repeat this mantra tend to have a warped very of the US
electoral system: http://newpol.org/node/199 highly recommended.  Of course,
the problem on the US left isn't people retreating into theory or small
sects, anti-intellectualism and the politics of "action" are far
more persuasive and corrosive.  There needs to be thought about uniting the
left (as leftists) into organization structures that for the short-term at
least aren't electoral in nature (see:
http://theactivist.org/blog/its-time-for-the-left-to-get-serious )

On Sat, Mar 6, 2010 at 11:51 AM, Marv Gandall <marvgandall at videotron.ca>wrote:


> On 2010-03-06, at 8:25 AM, Carrol Cox wrote:
> >
> > Chuck Grimes wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >> This guy isn't just weak on liberal causes. He is an outright enemy.
> >>
> >>
> > I bvelieve I've been saying that for 10 years -- b3fore I had ever heard
> > of Obama. He is a Democrat. What more needs to be said?
> >
> > The DP leadership, the DP institutionally, is not and n ever has been
> > weak or cowardly or sdtupid. It is the enemy. When will radicals
> > realized that, realizee _deply_ and recognize that it will not change.
> > Not in a decade. Not ever. It does not matter who the 2016 nominee is.
> > He/she is already the enemy.
> ========================
> Carrol tirelessly repeats his mantra, and for some unfathomable reason, I
> keep rising to the bait. :)
>
> So let me try once again:
>
> For Marxists and other radicals who were active in the unions and allied
> social movements, Carrol's statement above was never the end point but the
> start of any serious discussion about the Democrats and liberal capitalist
> (ie. social democratic) parties abroad. The question was never whether these
> parties were political "enemies" but rather how to displace them. When the
> far left was organized and growing in small (and not so small) mass parties,
> it was possible to conceive that these would one day supplant the bourgeois
> reform parties. Even then, participation in these larger organizations,
> where possible, was encouraged in cases where the far left was considered
> still too weak to serve as a viable pole of attraction on the outside.
>
> Carrol believes he is unique in insisting on a boycott of the Democrats.
> But shunning the Democrats and other mass reform parties in favour of more
> stimulating intellectual activity in tiny study groups or political sects
> has been characteristic of left-wing intellectuals for generations. Such
> abstention is more understandable today when there is no longer a vital
> working class political culture nor the opportunity to participate in a
> significant socialist movement within it, but it remains sadly self-deluding
> to pretend that such abstention constitutes meaningful political action in
> Bloomington or elsewhere. Carrol can at least take comfort that he is not as
> alone as he commonly supposes. His views are fairly typical, it seems to me,
> of many on the now mainly campus-based US far left.
>
>
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