[lbo-talk] Greenberg post-election survey

[Marv Gandall]

Your point that "worst of all, this perspective is shared by most adherents/followers/members" is an important one. Leftists have openly confronted the liberal and social democratic leaderships of the unions and union-based parties for generations and have historically come out on the short end. I know from my own past participation in the unions and the NDP that the consciousness and combativity of the members is not generally ahead of the leadership, as is commonly assumed by Trotskyists and other leftists who subscribe to "crisis of leadership" theory. But there are certain times and situations when the ranks become restless and unhappy with the direction of their leaders, and my reading of Democratic party politics is that the period since Obama's election has been one of those rare conjunctures, when it becomes especially necessary to project an alternative.

On 2010-11-06, at 10:02 AM, Alan Rudy wrote:


> My reaction to this last, very good, sentence was: "Huh, I wonder if the DP
> and union leadership ever even consider mobilizing their members/base or if
> the social movement/grassroots politics model is beyond their ken..."  My
> sense, sadly, is that party, union, and DC-based "movement" organizations
> see themselves as leaders who direct adherents/followers/memberships not as
> the temporary heads of democratic organizations... and, worst of all, this
> perspective is shared by most adherents/followers.memberships.  I know,
> quite well, that there have always been tendencies in this direction and
> that the 1955-1975 period of increased bottom-up driven activity is the
> anomaly in the second half of the 20th C... but it's still depressing.
> 
> On Sat, Nov 6, 2010 at 9:15 AM, Marv Gandall <marvgand at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> The problem, of course, is that the DP and union leaderships are reluctant
>> to mobilize their members for fear of losing control of the process and
>> risking more serious defeat - the point of departure for the left in
>> opposition to the leaders of mass-based organizations.
>> 
>> 
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk