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On Green Left's coverage: Louis has expressed disdain at Australians having an opinion on the Sanders movement, but inconsistently as he prefers the opinion of a Socialist Alternative staffer who I don't know has ever been active outside Melbourne, to those of US Marxists covered recently in Green Left: Vince Emanuele < https://www.greenleft.org.au/content/hope-and-hate-us-electoral-race>; Boots Riley < https://www.greenleft.org.au/content/boots-riley-why-i-am-voting-bernie-sanders> and Isaac Silver < https://www.greenleft.org.au/content/united-states-sanders-campaign-invigorating-and-unifying-left>. To describe as cheerleading these views, based on what's happening on the ground rather than high principles applied from afar (not to mention the regular Sanders-scepticism expressed in Green Left by Barry Sheppard) is rather churlish. Silver in particular was very clear about limitations and potential pitfalls, and Emmanuele has a very clear summary of revolutionary united front approach to the campaign: "Never in my life have I poured this much time, effort, sweat, emotions and resources into an electoral campaign. Generally, I avoid electoral politics like the plague, but this campaign is different in every way, from its vision and connection to social movements to its ability to bring out poor and working-class Americans who have given up on the system and everything in between. "Any serious left-wing organiser in the US should view the Sanders campaign as a strategic opportunity to not only potentially have an ally in the White House, but to use the campaign as a way to bolster existing social movement efforts and build independent left-wing organisations that outlast the 2020 campaign and go beyond Sanders’ vision." This seems much the same view as those of Kshama Sawant and the US Socialist Alternative, the half of Solidarity that apparently voted to be part of the campaign, much of the former ISO, and may voices within the DSA. To suggest there's principled defenders of political independence on one side and a bunch of demoralised sheeple blindly following in Harrington's footsteps on the other is a caricature and block to real discussion. And an unfortunate habit of the Australian Socialist Alternative who despite their good work tend to draw exaggerated lines between themselves and the rest of the far left, as a show of being the only real revolutionaries. On Fri, Mar 6, 2020 at 4:10 PM Ratbag Media via Marxism < marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu> wrote: > ******************** POSTING RULES & NOTES ******************** > #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. > #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. > #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. > ***************************************************************** > > https://www.greenleft.org.au/content/green-left-issue-1256 > _________________________________________________________ > Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm > Set your options at: > https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/nick.j.fredman%40gmail.com > _________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
