On 2012-03-14, at 10:22 AM, Wojtek S wrote:
> Marv: " The CPUSA didn't orient to the DP in the 30's because it
> thought it could transform it into a Bolshevik party. It entered it
> mainly for strategic reasons: to be close to the mass of trade
> unionists and other "
>
>
> [WS:] This begs the question whether party "identities" are written in
> stone or are subject to political pressures from below. My hunch is
> that is a mixed bag, or to be more precise, about 1/4 of the former
> and 3/4 of the latter. That is to say, while parties have some parts
> of their identities that are relatively fixed over time, they are also
> in the business of winning elections, which makes them responsive to
> pressures from the public (however defined.)
No question. You could not understand the evolution of the social democratic and Communist parties or of the German Greens any other way. Let me qualify that. Trotskyists, anarchists, and others to the left of these parties attribute the adaptation to electoral politics of these opposition parties to the "treachery" of their leaders. That's a lot of treachery by many trade union and socialist leaders in many countries over many generations.
> The fact of the matter remains that left policies - by which I mean
> European style social-democrats and parties left of them - enjoy
> support of a rather tiny minority of the US electorate - around 5-6
> percent judging from historical records (e.g. Debbs - who arguably
> represents the highest mark of left politics in the US received only
> 6% of the votes.)
Here we disagree. I don't see very much to distinguish between the leadership, program, and social base of the US Democrats and the British European social democrats. They are all pro-capitalist liberal parties favouring Keynesian rather than "Austrian" management of their economies. Their members on both sides of the Atlantic commonly belong to and support trade unions and the women's, gay, minority, environmentalist, antiwar, and other mass organizations, and are engaged in a common struggle against the efforts of the major right-wing parties in each country to cripple these organizations and rollback the rights and benefits identified with the welfare state. US Democrats would be quite comfortable voting for European social democratic parties in Europe and vice-versa. Canadian social democrats in the New Democratic Party, for example, identify very strongly with the DP across the border, and the Socialist International has always hailed the election of Democratic presidents. Democratic governments have a "bipartisan" responsibility to defend the Empire, which has provoked some differences with European social democrats, especially at the base of these parties, but these disagreements have been shared by rank-and-file Democrats in the US who have been equally opposed to the wars in Vietnam and Iraq and other forms of US imperialist intervention.
> Contrary to opinions expressed by many leftists,
> the majorities of the US electorate do not vote for a "lesser evil"
> but for candidates who more-or-less reflect their own political views,
> as Hofstadter ("The American Political Tradition") aptly observed.
>
>> From that POV, the main question is not how to establish a left party
> in the US, but how to make left politics more acceptable to the US
> voters. If the views of the US voters drift to the left, I am pretty
> sure the question of a left party - whether a new brand name or a
> 'reformed' Democrat party - will be answered in some way.
>
> Wojtek
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