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On Sat, Mar 7, 2020 at 1:02 PM Louis Proyect via Marxism < marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu> wrote: > > I think that you and your comrades have extrapolated from the rottenness > of the Australian Labour Party the rationale that since it is rotten and > since the Democratic Party in the USA is rotten, why not a "tactical" > vote for another rotten party when the candidate is so breathtakingly > wonderful like Bernie Sanders. > Yeah not really. What you seem to be referring to is my responses to an argument of yours: That, you seemed to me to say, there's absolute class difference between the US Democrats and "labor/social democratic parties" , which means any vote or involvement in the former is impermissable under any circumstances, while either might be acceptable in some circumstances regarding the latter. I think that's far too abstract to be of any practical use. As is any unqualified described of labor/soc dem parties as "workers parties", or the former DSP's view of the ALP as "liberal bourgeois". The social nature of the voting base, activist base, leadership, organisational forms, and which class or class fraction the formal positions and actions of the party serves, and how all these aspects change over time, are all relevant to tactics towards nass parties. The ALP as an example had from the 1890s liberal bourgeois, pro-capitalist politics (at that time tariffs, public infrastructure building, industrial arbitration, extreme racism), and was tightly controlled by middle class lawyers and preachers as well as union leaders. At a few different times, with the influence of the Russian revolution or the 60s-70s radicalisation, there's been militant, avowedly socialist currents form that arguably at least Marxists should relate to if not join. The Australia SWP was partly entryist towards the ALP in the 70s and early 80s, a few years before my joining. Once I looked through the paper associated with this work, Labor Militant, and was a bit surprised to see a debate over several issues between the editorial board and Australia.s foremost Marxist academic RW Connell, over tactics in the ALP. I've no idea if this activity was really worthwhile but it seemed as least as arguably as involvement in the UK Bennite movement at the same time. Things were very different in both parties just a few years later in the mid-80s. The Democratic Party compared to "labor social democratic parties" is under more direct bourgeois control, in funding and leading personnel, while having a similar working class and urban middle class voter base and substantively similar in formally somewhat different ties to union and other "social movement" bureacracies. While it's then even less likely to house any sort of class struggle social democratic-type current than the ALP, but this isn't impossible in very specific circumstances. Maybe only twice ever — Upton Sinclair's EPIC campaign in the 30s and the Sanders since 2015, more debatably to some extent in the Jackson movement. One thing clear in all these examples is they were time-limited windows. I have often considered the possibility of spending a month or so > studying the Australian Labour Party in order to give you and your > comrades a proper answer but I've learned that you are here mainly to > intervene. Well study or not as you will, but the US and Australia are hardly mutually equivalent interests, with the US economy being 25 times that of Australia and still just about globally dominated. A lot of us have also ties to the US, with my father being a lecturer in US history, doing his PhD at Stanford (where he met Kerensky) and working for a while at NYU while I was a baby and toddler. And I've raised a lot of things here that are of no particular "line" thank you very much. > It would be a waste of time for me to get up to speed on > Australian politics when the other side of a debate is so into > groupthink. Viva Rojova. Viva Sanders. Bleh-bleh. > My point was about Green Left's coverage of the Sanders movement. Which over the last three years or so has mainly consisted of the views of US activists, including several articles by Barry Sheppard and Kshama Sawant a couple of years ago critical of involvement in the Sanders campaign, and coverage of debates between different currents at recent DSA conferences. Perhaps the balance could be different but I don't think it's a bad approach for a socialist paper on foreign struggles. Red Flag in that time has had 3 or 4 articles all written by in-house experts of the same views from the same office in Melbourne Trades Hall. They may even be right but they're hardly less groupthinky. _________________________________________________________ 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
