“The Democrats are worthless”: An interview with Howie Hawkins Gregor Baszak, Platypus Review 126 | May 2020 https://platypus1917.org/2020/05/01/the-democrats-are-worthless-an-interview-with-howie-hawkins/
. . . "... I think the problem in this country is that since 1936 the Popular Front, when the Communists went into a coalition with the liberal bourgeoisie against the fascists, has been the dominant policy on the Left. However, since 1848 the traditional principle of socialist politics was class independence from the capitalists. The so-called “socialists” in this country have forgotten that. They don’t know that they’re continuing the Popular Front because they don’t study history. And when you’re in a Popular Front with the Democrats, you are the junior partner: they set the agenda, and you go out and knock on doors or make phone calls. You’re not a Left anymore; you’re just grunt workers for the corporate liberals and neoliberals." . . . "GB: Some might say that it was the function of Bernie Sanders all along to get young people to place their hopes in the Democrats. "HH: I think it’s true. My friend, the late Bruce Dixon used the sheepdog metaphor. Whether it was Bernie’s intention or not, that was the effect. And I think that was his intention. "His wife, Jane Sanders, spoke to the Left Forum in New York City in 2018 and told the audience in the opening plenary to register as Democrats. I stood in the back and gave it a thumbs down. She said, I know you’re not going to do that, but you should. He wanted that so that people would vote for him in the primaries this time. That’s been his function. "It’s a shame. I knew him in the 70s when he was a third-party candidate with the Liberty Union. I worked on his campaign and dropped leaflets for him. When he set up his Eugene Debs slideshow, I arranged showings of it. But then when he wanted to get into Congress after being mayor of Burlington, he got a deal with the Democrats in Vermont and basically said, don’t run a serious candidate against me as a Democrat, and I will make sure that progressives in Vermont won’t run in some of the races that you do want to win. They’ve had this deal going on. Bernie is nominally an independent, but in practice he’s functionally a Democrat. For example, in the last Senate election in 2018 when he got re-elected to the U.S. Senate, he was in the Democratic primary and then he declined the nomination. So he’s on the ballot as an independent, but there was no Democrat because he’d gotten their nomination too. "GB: Since Sanders dropped out of the race and endorsed Joe Biden, the Left has to plan for a post-Bernie future. Where do you see that to lie? Do you see that with figures like Ilhan Omar or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or do you see it lying elsewhere? "HH: When push comes to shove, these younger members of Congress line up with Pelosi. We had a primary. I was the candidate for governor in New York in 2018, and DSA and the liberals got behind a woman named Cynthia Nixon who was an actress who supported Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders in 2016. I think they were star struck. She got beat by Governor Andrew Cuomo by about 2:1, which is basically what the Democratic Party is in New York. One third progressives and two thirds regular Democrats who’ll vote for the establishment inside the Democratic Party. Immediately after the primary was over, Ocasio-Cortez went on CNN and endorsed Cuomo and all the Democrats. Cuomo is a corporate Democrat if ever there was one. "Of course, I was in the race, and so we asked DSA to consider endorsing us. Instead of having that debate, they had a debate on whether or not to have a debate on endorsing me. The result was not to even have the discussion. "Some people within the DSA and Jacobin say there’s a contradiction between the progressive Democrats and the corporate Democrats, and at some point there’s going to be a dirty break, as they call it. I’ve been hearing that since the 60s." . . . -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#1451): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/1451 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/76751875/21656 -=-=- 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. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/8674936/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
