Marv Gandall wrote: > I don't know offhand of any historical instance where the flow of traffic > hasn't been from both directions in the construction of a new party - from > within the established but increasingly discredited mass party favoured by > the workers, and from those who remained apart from it. Do you? Syriza seems > to me the latest example of a union of outside far left groups and popular > movements with disaffected militants from within PASOK, the once hegemonic > Greek social democratic party, who have been frustrated in their efforts to > prevent the party leadership's commitment to the vicious austerity program > being imposed on the Greek people. (Whatever their origins in the workers' > movement, PASOK and the social democratic parties in Europe and elsewhere now > represent the liberal wing of the capitalist class in much the same manner as > the Democratic Party in the States, and your analysis of the DP's internal > dynamics is also applicable in their case.) <
The fact that some progressives become disgusted with organizations such as PASOK and so leave is different from an "inside" strategy. Rather, it's a matter of people coming to more complete consciousness of what's going on and realizing that being inside the party was a mistake. A true "inside" strategy, in contrast, would involve people who already know about the nature of PASOK and the like deciding to join anyway and then "bore from within" in an effort to transform it. (BTW & FWIW, this was the late Michael Harrington's strategy as part of the SP-USA and then the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee: he wanted to "realign" the DP, making it more like a social-democratic party.) Usually true "inside" strategies involve publicly muting criticism of the party that's being bored into and its leaders. It also happens that the "borers from within" are expelled if the party's leadership sees them as actually being able to transform it. >As someone with first hand knowledge of the Cuban Revolution, I was expecting >you would also cite Fidel's early political activity within the bourgeois >Partido Orthodoxo prior to the Batista dictatorship which did not preclude he >and other young activists from later converging with Marxists formerly active >in the Cuban CP and other small left wing groups to form the July 26 movement.< Was Fidel Castro a socialist or a revolutionary when he worked with the Orthodoxos? or was he more like the above-mentioned refugees from the PASOK, developing his ideas partly in response to the problems of working within that party? -- 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
