Your argument is seriously marred by the notion of Nader as a political detour. The implication is that in his absence, the mass anger would assume a more acceptable form. I believe in critical support of Nader, but I reject both of your premises. At this time, at least in electoral politics, Nader is the most successful anti-corporate messenger we got--frightening enough to warrant a full denuciatory editorial in the New York Times. This may not speak well for the American left, but given its desultory state, what would you expect? For a reasonably large, nonsectarian movement, he is basically what there is to work with. And the notion that without him, workers would move left is as much a fantasy as the notion that trade unionists would act more militantly if they weren't held back by all those union bosses. The Nader campaign may be full of its own ambiguities, but one thing is certain: most people who vote for him do not have another more radical consciousness that they hold in secret and upon which they would act if he were not around.
Joel Blau
A hundred years ago, bitter battles were fought between those who claimed
the
mantle of Marxist leadership (Kautsky, Bernstein etc) and those who
from the
margins of the movement (Luxemburg, Lenin) bitterly denounced them
as
impostors, bourgeois politicians and above all, "revisionists", whose
purpose was to deny the possibility of capitalist crisis and the reality
of
proletarian revolution, and to deliver the working class bound hand
and foot
to its mortal enemies. The same thing is going on now, not just here
but al over the place. It is part of a pre-revolutionary ferment.
Mark Jones wrote:
Joel Blau wrote:
>
>
> This reading of current American politics is absolutely
> breath-taking in its
> misjudgments. This is the U.S. in the year 2000, not Russia in
> 1902; we may have
> turned the corner after 25 years gravitating right, but we are
> not in anything
> remotely resembling a pre-revolutionary situation;Nobody says that the US is in a prerevolutionary situation. I'm not going to
bandy words with people whose seeming purpose is to obfuscate. There clearly
is a colossal ferment going on not just in US campuses but in many parts of
the world, many social locales. As a matter of fact, Russia in 1902 was a
picture of Edwardian social quiescence by comparison. We are not in that
situation, not by a long way. But the masses are not rattling the White
House gates, evidently. Therefore it is necessary to use this time to
agitate, to mobilise and to politically educate people. The Nader campaign
is an obvious opportunity to do that. As I understand it, Joel Blau's plan
is to shut up, keep mum, don't talk politics or criticise the candidate's
obvious shortcomings, and in this way maximise the electorate's interest in
Nader. It is unserious and it illustrates how necessary IS a principled
approach: meaning, support Nader, but as the rope supports the hanged man.
Nader is a detour to nowhere. You cannot make an icon of him and sit on your
hands and ignore the fact that his principal role is to safely vent mass
anger while delivering a Bush presidency.Mark Jones
http://www.egroups.com/group/CrashList
