[lbo-talk] Bernie Sander's "saving democracy" amendment

[Carrol Cox]

I think lbo83235's argument here is consistent with my remarks on "Thought"
and "Theory," and I am in substantial agreement. As a topic of debate
_among_ activists, within an ongoing movement, it is clearly powerful: it
concerns the issue of creating the needed unifying slogans of the movement,
and in that sense is relevant (for example) to our exploratory use, locally,
of Fight the Corporate Attack on Democracy. It is part of our ongoing
Thought, not a Theory demanding our assent or rejection.

Carrol

-----Original Message-----
From: lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org [mailto:lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org]
On Behalf Of lbo83235
Sent: Monday, February 06, 2012 8:04 AM
To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Bernie Sander's "saving democracy" amendment

On Feb 6, 2012, at 3:34 PM, Carrol Cox wrote:


> I find this thread a bit peculiar, in so far as the conversation
implicitly
> assumes that the Sanders Amendment might actually become part of the
> Constitution. The result is that the whole discussion becomes purely
> 'academic,' detached from actual political activity.

I'm not in a position to comment on Sanders' proposal, and I didn't mean to
be taken as addressing it - I haven't read the book, you could say - but
rather to be trying to clarify that the historical issue has been very
seriously misunderstood in this thread and elsewhere.

Sanders' proposal is just one move in an ongoing fightback on this issue. It
may or may not be a good one, and one factor that might be useful in
assessing its potential political value is its responsiveness to the
historical issue. (There are other factors as well, yes.)

The broader "campaign" around corporate personhood, properly understood, is
at best an opportunity to organise people around a concrete demand that has
some popular and possibly growing traction and that, if achieved, would
provide some legal basis to push back against the overwhelming dominance of
corporate spending on political advertising, although with a far-sighted
legal strategy, a reversal of Santa Clara could also provide a basis for
taming commercial advertising more generally - an implication Michael's
original post correctly noted.

Maybe all any of that gets you is a modestly improved terrain for waging
ideological battle. But that would sure be nice.

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