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On Wed, Aug 15, 2018 at 12:00 PM John Reimann via Marxism < [email protected]> wrote: > What Bustelo ignores, though, is the fact that DSA is not run as an > organization that is independent of the Democrats. I am not referring to > just organizationally (although that's bad enough), How is the DSA organizationally "dependent" on the Democratic Party? By running on its ballot line--something it can only do by its own independent efforts (getting primary voters to select them) and it hasn't done by coddling up to DP Pacs or anything like that? The DSA as an organization is independent of the Democratic Party as far as I can make out. > but programmatically in > terms of the issues it takes up. The overwhelming main focus has been on > single payer health care. Why? Because the liberal wing of the Democrats > has made a strategic decision that a focus on that will lead them back into > the majority in 2018 and into the White House in 2020. > I see no evidence that DSAers have focused on single payer health insurance because part of the Democratic Party made a decision. People are focused on it because they see it as a strategically important and "winnable" fight. I agree there should be more criticisms of the shortcomings and talk of socialized. I am not convinced one should counterpose a fight for socialized medicine to single payer, but I could be. However, even if I were convinced of that, it would still take a lot more solid evidence and argument to convince me DSAers are fighting for single payer because of some kind of programmatic subordination to the Democratic Party given that no one in the DSA seems to think that and given that there isn't some unelected, unaccountable bureaucracy to have enforced such a decision behind people's backs. > Now, a wing of the Democrats is accepting the "abolish ICE" slogan, so DSA > has taken up that slogan. > It seems more like activists pushed the slogan and Democrats took it up, but even then advancing such a slogan hardly seems like good evidence to me of programmatic dependence on the Democratic Party. > complete refusal to even hint at the shortcomings of single payer [...] or > even a hint at the need for socialized > medicine. Why? Because the Democratic Party liberals won't touch that idea. > I see no evidence that DSAers don't do this because DP "liberals" won't. I see a lot of vitriol directed at "liberals" and the "Democratic Party" from DSAers though. > So, what the DSA leadership is doing is using DSA to mobilize millenials > (mainly) to campaign for liberal Democrats and their program. > And here is where I think your analysis really fails John. There is hardly a "DSA leadership." The NPC is more non-functional than dysfunctional. The M4A committee does exist and represents a certain political tendency--and I see more active members disagreeing with them than following their lead. In other words, even where leadership does exist formally or informally, there is little stomach in the DSA in general that I've seen for following it. There is no mechanism I see for it to even be possible that some elements of the DSA could be enforcing the will of liberal Democrats on it. > _________________________________________________________ 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
