On 2010-03-06, at 9:58 PM, Bhaskar Sunkara wrote:
> Largely agreed, as long as we are acknowledging that Carrol's fundamental
> point is correct (about the class nature of Obama and company)
But what is so "fundamental" about it? It's rather obvious that all of the conservative and liberal/social democratic governing parties in the two party systems of the developed capitalist countries have bourgeois leaderships and programs. There is little that distinguishes the DP from the British LP, the French SP, the German SPD, etc. other that the Democrats have the dirty work of running an empire which the others no longer have to contend with. The socialist parties with organic ties to the trade unions and a mass working class following which even remotely posed a challenge to capitalism no longer exist or have been wholly transformed.
> 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.
I was responding to Carrol, and narrowly had in mind the aging veterans of the 60's who still heavily populate the left-wing lists and sects when I made the comment which you rightly put into broader context. There still existed a strong international labour and socialist movement and national liberation struggles led by the left to attract students and intellectuals of my political generaton to Marxist theory and to the proliferating Maoist and Trotskyist sects which appeared to be more militant and energetic than the "old left" mass parties with an electoral focus. A proper emphasis on direct action could easily spill over into blind "activistism" then also, though these always latent student anarchist impulses did not express themselves ideologically to nearly the same degree as they do today, following the demise of the avowedly Marxist movements, parties, and states.
>
> 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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