On 2010-09-01, at 2:01 PM, SA wrote:
> On 9/1/2010 1:42 PM, Marv Gandall wrote:
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>> Many political challenges to the status quo have been and are "serious".
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> [...]
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>> none threatened the existence of the "bourgeois democratic system" in periods other than economic depression and, in the case of defeated powers, war.
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> If challenges to the status quo can be serious even if they don't threaten the bourgeois democratic system, why can't they be serious and attached to one of the main parties?
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Not only can they be, but it can't be otherwise. I thought that would be clear from my previous comment. The great historic social movements - for trade union rights and social insurance, for equal rights for women, minorities, and gays, for an end to US wars of aggression, for safe and clean energy, for civil liberties, etc. - have all sought to reform rather than overthrow the existing system and have perforce attached themselves to the Democratic Party, the more liberal of the two main political props of the existing system, in order to satisfy their demands in the face of opposition from the other conservative party to the right. A revolutionary movement seeking to expropriate the capitalists and establish a new form of popular democracy would necessarily be in conflict with the DP which is committed to the preservation and strengthening of the current system of power and property.