It is my understanding that the highest voter turnout ever recorded in any
state in the US was in South Carolina, the year they voted to end
Reconstruction. 107%.
At 03:38 PM 1/11/01 -0600, you wrote:
>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
>
>
>
>_______________________________________________
>Crashlist website: http://website.lineone.net/~resource_base
>
"I am not a Marxist."
-Karl Marx
"Mask no difficulties."
-Amilcar Cabral
"Am I to be cursed forever with becoming
somebody else on the way to myself?
-Audre Lorde
_______________________________________________
Crashlist website: http://website.lineone.net/~resource_base
