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Louis writes: "Look, Joaquin, you are not the best person to lecture others on the evils of the Democratic Party considering the nonsense you were favoring us with in 2008 when you were citing Lenin as an authority on the tactical permissibility of voting for Obama." I stand by what I wrote then and what I just wrote. Voting in bourgeois elections is strictly and solely a *tactical* question. The position of the SWP and derivatives, which Louis holds, that it is a matter of "principle" is essentially dogmatic-religious. And the mantra often heard in the SWP of old, that it is a matter of principle because elections are about which class shall rule, is electoral cretinism of the purest water. And nowhere more than in the United States, which has not seen an actual class movement of the working class *as such* in living memory. Such motion as there has been here in the direction of independent political action by working people has had a distinctive character of being an ideological movement centered among the intelligentsia (thinking here of the Nader campaigns). And despite mine and Louis's and everyone else's fervent hopes that those would be a precursor of broader motion, an indication of things to come, that did not turn out to be the case. Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky ALL accepted and applied this idea that voting in bourgeois elections is a tactical question. Lenin thought that increasing the number of representatives of the workers party in the Duma justified making an alliance with bourgeois parties against the more reactionary parties, even though it also meant voting for those bourgeois parties. And Trotsky thought and said it was ok to support a Black democrat as an expression of support to the democratic right to political representation being fought for by a movement among Black people. Louis disagrees with me on what I think is the plain meaning of what the Bolsheviks did in elections and what Trotsky wrote. That is why Louis finds an inconsistency between what I wrote in 2008 and what I write now. Because since he views voting as a matter of principle, he thinks I've already sinned and reproaches me with, in essence, let him who is without sin throw the first stone. The differences between Louis and I on this question of elections go back to my earliest days on the Marxism list. We disagreed in the 2000 election (I later came to the conclusion that probably I'd been wrong to take an abstentionist stance, but behind the disagreement was also two different approaches, one that nearly absolutized the value of even purely symbolic "political independence" in elections, contrasted to my view which attaches a lot less political significance to the act of voting). We agreed tactically in later elections (the California gubernatorial race, 2004 presidential) and disagreed again in 2008, and perhaps my biggest differences were not so much with Louis, whose exact tone and stance doesn't really stand out in my memory, but certainly many/most of the ardent McKinney and/or Nader supporters here who took a sectarian and denunciatory stance towards the motion/interest/excitement around Obama's campaign. And not just here. I thought the tone of Black Agenda Report, and my friend Bruce Dixon, was terribly narrow and sectarian, in Bruce's case perhaps understandably so since he's from Chicago and thus knew Obama. But my point in 2008 and now is that it isn't really about Obama or the Democrats, but about how working people --and in the Obama case, especially Blacks and Latinos-- are trying to give expression to their interests in the electoral arena. That was Lenin's point in his polemic against the ultralefts at the beginning of the 1920's. People from the SWP background are going to come back with, but those were workers parties Lenin was talking about. But I believe they're wrong to say that sort of reasoning and tactic must be limited to Stalinist and social democrats, i.e., bourgeois politicians from BOURGEOIS "workers" parties. Thus, for example, in the 1870's Marx expressed disappointment that English union leaders who had been put up as candidates by (if I remember right) the Liberal Party had not won office, because, Marx said, that would have been the surest way of getting rid of the whole lot. Clearly, Marx did not then have a full understanding of the resilience of bourgeois influence and reformist illusions in the working class, not having gone through the experiences we have had since then (and which, as Lenin explained, have a material base in countries like the United States in the relative privileges of working people made possible by imperialism super-profits). But, basically, Marx's approach was the same as Lenin's (and Lenin later quotes this passage in establishing the bonafides of the "critical support" tactic). And Marx took this approach not because he was talking about a "bad" workers party but on the contrary, precisely because there was no workers party. And that is at bottom what is involved with Lenin, he calls for "supporting" for example the murderers of Luxemburg and Liebnicht not because they represented a workers party but precisely because they DO NOT in any genuine sense represent the workers. Hence Lenin's phrase of "support like a rope supports a hanging man." Lenin called for voting "for" these candidates (under certain tactical circumstances) as a way of OPPOSING them, of getting a hearing. The vote "for" the reformists was the price of admission to the conversation. Leaving aside whether or how to apply that to the US democrats, the very concept of it necessarily means that how you vote in bourgeois elections was for Lenin a tactical question, and not at all what those rained in the SWP school call a matter of principle. If Louis would at least try to *understand* (not necessarily agree with) my position he will see there is no contradiction from my point of view from what I said around Obama's campaign and what I am saying now. He can of course, and this would be the real argument, say that one cannot both say one is opposed to the Democrats and say (as I did) that I had no problem with people who were voting for Obama. OF COURSE I much would have preferred them to vote for the mass revolutionary workers party that was within a hair's breadth of winning the presidency, but, unfortunately, not only wasn't there such a party within a hair's breadth of winning the election, in fact there was no such party *at all*, not even in embryo, and worse, there was (and is) no visible sign of a class movement that could give rise to such a party, nor has there been throughout mine (and Louis's) lifetime. This gives advocacy of independent working class political action in the electoral arena an extremely abstract and super ideological character because what we are advocating is essentially akin to an algebraic formula, symbols that have no immediately accessible material expression. UNDER THOSE CONDITIONS, it was perfectly logical, understandable and predictable that masses of people, including pretty much all the people we'd want to address, were going to vote for Obama. And actually for me, much more important than trying to "intervene" in the discussion THEN was trying to *understand* the phenomenon, because I did not think there was much to be gained by "intervening" back then, I thought the time to say something fruitfully would be later. And actually I think in relation to Obama that time has come much more quickly than I expected. That is illustrated by a recent CNN poll. Asked whether Dr. King's dream was being fulfilled in the United States, a couple of years ago only 34% of Blacks said so. Right after Obama's inauguration, 69% of Blacks said so. The most recent CNN poll to ask the question a couple of weeks ago showed that number to have declined to 55%. (Interestingly, CNN has not published those poll results on its web site, although they were aired on some CNN programs and a friend at that network sent me a copy of their cnn wire service report on the recent poll). Still further underneath the disagreement, I suspect, is my view of the very limited usefulness of what I call "preaching," i.e., trying to present a revolutionary socialist program in a very broad way. I have become increasingly convinced that explicitly *socialist* activity should focus on *propaganda* (in the narrow meaning of the term of explaining a whole series of complex ideas to a few people) and it should be sharply and clearly differentiated from "agitation" (explaining one or a few basic ideas to many people) which should be done in the framework of broader social and political formations or movements. Thus I think the "socialist election campaigns" of the SWP (yes, even of decades ago) were probably a mistake and efforts instead should have been focused on creating a broader challenge to the Democrats and Republicans in the electoral arena. * * * Finally, let me say how much I appreciated the expressions of solidarity and support I received from Louis, and other Marxmailers during my recent illness and treatment. It was a bit of a harrowing time. But Louis is absolutely right in his post in saying that in spite of what some may perceive as his sharpness in tone, I wouldn't have it any other way. It'd be a hell of a thing to have gone through that sort of cancer treatment only to find at the end of it everyone treating me with kid gloves because of it. Cancer is still enough of a presence in my life (I had another PET scan just yesterday), and will remain a sort of sword of Damocles hanging over me for as long as I live, although I hope eventually to live long enough for it to become a small and distant thing. But the last thing I want is it leading to people refusing to fully engage with me politically, whether it turns out I'm here only for a few more months or a few more decades. Joaquin ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: [email protected] Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
