Charles Brown wrote:
>
>
> CB: That is sad, Tahir. It would seem that the "turnoff switch" in voters heads
>that it took the U.S. bourgeoisie decades to develop and install, can be taken right
>off the shelf and exported to other places. I may be overly mysterious when I say
>"Orwellian complex". It may be as simple as not nominating anybody that people want
>to vote for.
I recently came across, perhaps on one of these lists, a historical
account of voting in the U.S. The graph goes up and down, and the
writer was able to relate the movement of the curve to specific political
conjunctures. It has been both very low and very high in the past, and
it isn't a straight line in either direction. I'm sorry I can't remember the
source, but this is a matter on which more hard evidence is available
than any of us can come up with just by thinking about it.
In talking about elections, incidentally, we should always remember
that quite independently of what we might or might not achieve directly
from elect ions our priority always has to be (a) the recruitment and
political development of new activists and (b) the exposure of more
people to the concept (acceptance can come on another day) that
substantial change must come through mass struggle. If you focus just
on the election (even when running one's own candidates) you are apt
to forget that electoral choices only need be held for a few minutes
on election day. Commitment to long-term struggle is another thing.
The League of Revolutionary Struggle (to which I belonged at the
time) made great gains by throwing its resources behind the Jackson
campaign in 1988. By gains I mean primarily the number of people
with whom cadre were able to form new relationships. But LRS
made a profound error thereafter. It became obsessed with electoral
work, supporting a senatorial candidate in West Virginia, and Dinkins
for mayor in NYC. They were reduced to the state where they were
talking about that prick Daley representing the "progressive wing of
the bourgeoisie" in Chicago. Why? There was no one running they
could support and they thought they had to support someone.
The political relations formed in '88 dwindled; the inner spirit of LRS
became lax, and it simply disintegrated. Oh yes, they not only supported
Jackson in the primary campaign, but they followed him into the
Dukakis campaign. Insanity. Amiri Baraka broke with the League at
that time and (so I was told) set up a one-man picket at the Democratic
national Convention.
One other point (this has been discussed on another list but it is
relevant here and the LRS activity in Chicago illustrates it). In a
developed capitalist nation (I won't judge what is the case in the
third world) any "division in the ruling class" worthy of the name
would only occur under pre-revolutionary conditions. To day dream
about such "divisions" under normal circumstances is fairly positive
evidence that the daydreamer is on his/her way to opportunism and
social democracy.
Carrol
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