Could someone explain what Ralph Nader's candidacy has to do with the development of a socialist party in the U.S.? I could swear he was a petit bourgeois who believed in the beauties of small business and competition.
Very simple. The central class issue in US politics for my entire political life has been the repeal of Taft-Hartley. In 1948 Truman, as one of his demagogic counters to the Henry Wallace third party candidacy, promised the repeal of that "slave-labor law"--and, once elected, dumped that as well as all his other promises. Nader has explicitly and strongly called for the repeal of Taft-Hartley. So much for any impression of him as "petit-bourgeois." As for the development of a socialist party in the US--the condition sine qua non for that consumation devoutly to be wished is, and has always been, the breaking away of the US Labor Movement from its slavish subordination to the Dumbocratic faction of the US capitalist class. Any electorally meaningful progressive third-party campaign is a step in that direction. And all the hysteria about Nader--maybe--costing the Dumbocrats enough marginal votes in Florida and Missouri to return Ubu and his Bushits to the White House is proof that Nader's campaign is electorally meaningful. And this is not to express any indifference to the threat of a continuation of Ubuism. On the contrary, the more attractive and powerful is the Nader candidacy the larger the prospective turnout (Spain, last Sunday, proved how much fascistic parties are hurt by a big turnout). And the more possible is the crushing of Ubu by a tactical alliance fin Octobre between Nader and Kerry (Kerry withdraws from the race in Texas, Mississippi, Indiana, Virginia, Louisiana, and South Carolina in return for Nader withdrawing from the race in Florida, Missouri, Ohio, Michigan, Oregon, and West Virginia). You say that Kerry would rather see Ubu elected than make such a deal? My point about class politics, then, would be proven.
Shane Mage
"When we read on a printed page the doctrine of Pythagoras that all things are made of numbers, it seems mystical, mystifying, even downright silly.
When we read on a computer screen the doctrine of Pythagoras that all things are made of numbers, it seems self-evidently true." (N. Weiner)
