Chuck Grimes wrote: >> The political involvement of U.S. workers in electoral politics and, more >> specifically, in the Democratic Party has proved to be historically >> necessary, as a result of the pre-existing weakness and fragmentation of the >> U.S. working class.
Louis Proyect wrote: > That's also true of the PRI in Mexico or the Peronistas in Argentina, or > the Kemalists in Turkey. For various historical reasons, the trade > unions have had a relationship to bourgeois parties. But that's no > reason to take some kind of pseudo-Hegelian stance that effectively > legitimizes it. Working people have to survive. Thus most put up with unions, political leaders, and parties that aren't adequate (most often even from the narrow perspective of providing for survival), sometimes actively supporting them in hopes of getting some help. Most workers have too much on their plate to think big and consider alternative parties or unions. It's partly a chicken-and-egg problem: if there were large numbers of workers who belonged to adequate unions or political parties, that would encourage others to think big. We haven't gotten to that critical mass in recent memory. -- Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
