Re: [Marxism] Clay Claiborne on Syria and Jill Stein, responding to Louis on muftah.org

[DW via Marxism]

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Marx (and his US supporters in the Communist League) supported the
Republicans because they represented a *revolutionary democratic* solution
to slavery. This was in a period when Marx considered capitalism
"progressive" against the slavocracy which represented a wholly different
political economy.

It is absolutely historically GROTESQUE to compare voting for Abraham
Lincoln to Hillary Clinton. Are you stark raving mad, Thomas?

David Walters
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Re: [Marxism] Clay Claiborne on Syria and Jill Stein, responding to Louis on muftah.org

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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On 11/8/16 9:38 AM, DW via Marxism wrote:


It is absolutely historically GROTESQUE to compare voting for Abraham
Lincoln to Hillary Clinton. Are you stark raving mad, Thomas?


Maybe I am missing something but Thomas cited an entirely different 
article by Marx that strictly opposed voting for bourgeois candidates:


http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/pipermail/marxism/2016-November/272775.html
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Re: [Marxism] Clay Claiborne on Syria and Jill Stein, responding to Louis on muftah.org

[Mark Lause via Marxism]

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What!  Didn't Marx favor voting for Louis Napoleon to keep the
reactionaries from taking power? At the very time Marx was writing this,
Horace Greeley was yowling in the New York Tribune that voting for an
abolitionist party rather than the Whigs aided only the proslavery
Democrats (as though the Whigs weren't proslavery in their own right).

ML
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Re: [Marxism] Clay Claiborne on Syria and Jill Stein, responding to Louis on muftah.org

[Thomas via Marxism]

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“Even In Constituencies Where There Is No Prospect Of Our Candidate Being 
Elected, The Workers Must Nevertheless Put Up Candidates In Order To Maintain 
Their Independence”

“They Must Not Allow Themselves To Be Diverted From This Work By The Stock 
Argument That To Split The Vote Of The Democrats Means Assisting The 
Reactionary Parties”

March 1850 By Karl Marx, Address of the Central Committee to the Communist 
League [Excerpts]

With a view to checking the power and the growth of big capital, the democratic 
party demands a reform of the laws of inheritance and legacies, likewise the 
transfer of the public services and as many industrial undertakings as possible 
to the state and municipal authorities.

As for the workingmen – well, they should remain wage workers: for whom, 
however, the democratic party would procure higher wages, better labor 
conditions, and a secure existence.

The democrats hope to achieve that partly through state and municipal 
management and through welfare institutions. In short, they hope to bribe the 
working class into quiescence and thus to weaken their revolutionary spirit by 
momentary concessions and comforts.

The democratic demands can never satisfy the party of the proletariat.

While the democratic petty bourgeoisie would like to bring the revolution to a 
close as soon as their demands are more or less complied with, it is our and 
our task to make the revolution permanent, to keep it going until all the 
ruling and possessing classes are deprived of power, the governmental machinery 
occupied by the proletariat, and the organization of the working classes of all 
lands is so far advanced that all rivalry and competition among themseIves has 
ceased until the more important forces of production are concentrated in the 
hands of the proletarians

With us it is not a matter of reforming private property, but of abolishing it; 
not of hushing up class antagonism, but of abolishing the classes; not of 
ameliorating the existing society, but of establishing a new one.

Even in constituencies where there is no prospect of our candidate being 
elected, the workers must nevertheless put up candidates in order to maintain 
their independence, to steel their forces, to gauge their own strength and to 
bring their revolutionary position and party views before the public

They must not allow themselves to be diverted from this work by the stock 
argument that to split the vote of the democrats means assisting the 
reactionary parties.

All such talk is but calculated to cheat the proletariat.

The advance which the Proletarian Party will make through its independent 
political attitude is infinitely more important than the disadvantages of 
having a few more reactionaries in the national representation.

The gist of the matter is this: In case of an attack on a common adversary no 
special union is necessary; in the fight with such an enemy the interests of 
both parties, the middle-class democrats and the working-class party, coincide 
for the moment, and both parties will carry it on by a temporary understanding.

This was so in the past, and will be so in the future.

It is a matter of course that in the future sanguinary conflicts, as in all 
previous ones, the workingmen by their courage, resolution, and self-sacrifice, 
will form the main force in the attainment of victory.

As hitherto, so in the coming struggle, the petty bourgeoisie as a whole will 
maintain an attitude of delay, irresolution, and inactivity as long as 
possible, in order that, as soon as victory is assured, they may arrogate it to 
themselves and call upon the workers to remain quiet, return to work, avoid 
so-called excesses, and thus to shut off the workers from the fruits of victory.

T


-Original Message-
>From: Louis Proyect via Marxism 
>Sent: Nov 7, 2016 4:39 PM
>To: Thomas F Barton 
>Subject: Re: [Marxism] Clay Claiborne on Syria and Jill Stein, responding to 
>Louis on muftah.org
>
>
>On 11/7/16 4:31 PM, Jeff via Marxism wrote:
>>
>> Personally I don't think the Stein campaign is of great importance, but
>> this piece also takes on broader questions of Syria and the (Western)
>> left, and the way principles can be so easily compromised.
>
>Jeff, I have no idea of what your connection to Marxism is but when you 
>speak of principles, there is none more sacrosanct that refusing to vote 
>for bourgeois parties. All you need to do is read V.I. Lenin on the 
>Cadets. The fact that Clay was so completely isolated on Marxmail should 
>give you an idea of where people stand.

Re: [Marxism] Clay Claiborne on Syria and Jill Stein, responding to Louis on muftah.org

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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On 11/7/16 4:31 PM, Jeff via Marxism wrote:


Personally I don't think the Stein campaign is of great importance, but
this piece also takes on broader questions of Syria and the (Western)
left, and the way principles can be so easily compromised.


Jeff, I have no idea of what your connection to Marxism is but when you 
speak of principles, there is none more sacrosanct that refusing to vote 
for bourgeois parties. All you need to do is read V.I. Lenin on the 
Cadets. The fact that Clay was so completely isolated on Marxmail should 
give you an idea of where people stand.

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[Marxism] Clay Claiborne on Syria and Jill Stein, responding to Louis on muftah.org

[Jeff via Marxism]

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Personally I don't think the Stein campaign is of great importance, but 
this piece also takes on broader questions of Syria and the (Western) 
left, and the way principles can be so easily compromised.

- Jeff

http://muftah.org/america-syria-green-party/

For America & Syria’s Sake, Don’t Vote Green
Clay Claiborne
November 7th, 2016

In general, the Western left has taken a shameful attitude toward the 
Syrian conflict. Instead of supporting the Syrian people’s struggle 
against dictatorship, many leftists have promoted an anachronistic view 
of Russia and its allies, and accused Syrian revolutionaries of being 
Western proxies. The approach to Syria taken by the U.S. Green Party, 
which is largely representative of the left in the United States, 
largely reflects these tendencies.


Louis Proyect, a well-respected radical that for eighteen years has run 
MarxMail, an email list-serve of over 1500 Marxists activists and 
scholars, has, until recently, been a strong supporter of the Syrian 
revolution. He, like me, went against the tide of non-interventionist 
sentiment and supported Libyans and Syrians fighting against 
Russian-backed dictators to bring democracy to their countries.


Anyone who has taken this path knows it can be a hard and lonely road. 
As it turns out, supporting the “wrong” revolutions can lose you friends 
fast on the American left. But, this year Proyect decided to come in 
from the cold and support the Green Party’s presidential candidate, Jill 
Stein – an American politician who actively favors the regime of Syrian 
President Bashar al-Assad.


Proyect’s support for the Stein campaign raises questions about how he 
can square this decision with his opposition to the Assad regime. He 
attempted to address this divergence in The Green Party and Syria, which 
was published on Muftah, on October 4, 2016. In his article, Proyect 
excuses Stein’s terrible position on Syria, in the service of building a 
third-party in American politics. It is a position that is both naïve 
and dangerous.

Jill Stein and Syria

As far as Jill Stein is concerned, the U.S. government must work with 
Syria, Russia, and Iran to restore all of Syria to Assad’s control. 
Stein posted a statement to this effect on her campaign website, 
Jill2016.org, on November 2, 2015. I call it “Putin Approved,” because 
it is hard to imagine what Assad or Russian President Vladimir Putin 
would not like about the policy position.


In her statement, Stein supports the legitimacy of the 
forty-five-year-old Assad dictatorship, and by implication, certifies as 
legitimate Assad’s June 2014 88.7% election victory, in the midst of a 
raging civil war. She defines all rebels as “jihadi terrorists,” 
mimicking Assad’s own position on the opposition. Stein goes on to 
insist that no liberated areas of Syria should remain outside of Assad’s 
control, not even Rojava, a leftist Kurdish region that has managed to 
win a degree of autonomy. At no point does she present a plan for shared 
governance or a transition from Assad’s rule.


On October 5, 2016 the Stein campaign deleted the statement and quietly 
replaced it with a shorter, less transparently pro-Assad policy. The 
revision was not mentioned on the campaign website, but was called out 
in a number of tweets.


Despite this attempted face saving, it cannot be forgotten that Jill 
Stein has, in effect, demanded that every gain made by suffering and 
martyrdom since the Syrian revolution began in 2011 be abandoned and 
that “all of Syria” be returned to conditions of police state terror.


While in Stein’s conspiracy fantasy world there are many theories about 
how U.S. President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton “orchestrated regime 
change” in Syria, the reality is that the Syrian people just got fed up. 
If Stein did not so easily fall for dictators willing to mouth off about 
Israel, and appreciated the everyday struggles of those living under 
Muammar Gaddafi in Libya or Bashar al-Assad in Syria, she would see that 
the impetus for revolution or “regime change” in those countries came 
from the people themselves.


While Stein is free to believe Damascus’s denials about using sarin gas 
and barrel bombs, numerous reports from Amnesty International, Human 
Rights Watch and the United Nations make it clear that the Assad 
government is a criminal regime with no regard for the right of it 
citizens. But, since the people either do not exist or are not that 
important for her, Stein can disregard their struggles, and, instead, 
take a self-important view that puts her country at the center of every 
important global event.

Proyect on Stein

In his Muftah,