On 2013-09-23, at 7:06 PM, Louis Proyect wrote: > On 9/23/13 6:54 PM, Marv Gandall wrote: >> Appeals to unity ring hollow in the absence of a palpable >> spirit of comradeship, an understanding which, as we know, still >> escapes some of the most vociferous contemporary proponents of broad >> left unity. > > This is a none too subtle reference to my refusal to round up votes for > Obama or de Blasio.
It was not a comment aimed exclusively at yourself, though you qualify, and it had nothing to do with a refusal to round up votes for Obama or De Blasio. It was generally directed at leftists attacking other leftists who in all important respects share the same political views. In your case, I can't see you lasting for very long in the same party with Julio or Yoshie Furuhashi or Walter Lippman or any number of other individuals and grouplets who describe themselves as revolutionary socialist, never mind the much larger number of those who identify themselves as socialists of one kind of another, and left liberals both inside and outside the Democratic Party who support the goals of the trade unions and popular movements and are critical in varying degrees of the Democratic Party's leadership and direction. > I will remain vociferous on the need to reject the > 200 year old party of war, capitalism, and racism. Again, it's not your vociferous criticism of the Democratic Party which is at issue. The party's leadership and its subservience to US capitalism and imperialism deserve the harshest criticism. However, the trade unionists, blacks, hispanics, women, gays, and other liberal constituencies within it do not. They see the party, rightly or wrongly, as offering their only potential defence against conservative assaults on their gains in the legislative, judicial, and regulatory arenas. So far as I can tell, you disdain the DP's working class supporters for not leaving it for the Greens or some other marginal third party which can offer them no possibility of protection at all. >> By the 30's, there was >> already not much to choose between Norman Thomas' Socialist Party and >> the New Deal Democrats with their newly-acquired industrial working >> class base, as Thomas and other SP leaders themselves understood. > > I wasn't aware that there were racists in the SP like Strom Thurmond. > You learn something new every day. The SP never got close enough to power to curry favour with the Southern racists and corral their legislative votes. I don't know that the SP would have behaved less opportunistically than the Democrats in similar circumstances. Look what growth and proximity to power did to the German Greens and to the Social Democrats and Eurocommunists whose objectives were not dissimilar to Thomas' SP. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
