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"If you see voting for Democrats as a tactical question, you are breaking with socialist electoral thinking at least until the rise of the Popular Front. For all the homage paid by Sanders, Jacobin and the DSA to Eugene V. Debs, his entire political career was devoted to running *against* the two parties of capitalism." If one wants to apply Debs's politics like a cookie-cutter, I am indeed breaking with it. I am not breaking with "socialist electoral thinking" in general for sure given that it wasn't the position of socialists in general nor of the revolutionary, Marxist wing in particular, to never-vote for capitalist parties. Let us as you say, not base our approach on chapter and verse and instead consider the situation Debs was in, which was fairly unique among countries with elections and a socialist left at that time, where you had two parties agree to a counterrevolutionary outcome to end Reconstruction, and further, the Democrats from their founding had been the more reactionary party, and yet--due to the particular history of the US and plantation slavery--they were the party that would feign to be more pro-"working class" and pro-union and thereby by-and-large ended up absorbing the initial attempts at reform or working class parties. Debs in my estimation was reacting, appropriately, to that history. I do not think that is the situation we are in today. -Jason _________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
