> On Mar 13, 2016, at 4:34 PM, Louis Proyect <l...@panix.com> wrote: > > On 3/13/16 7:22 PM, Marv Gandall wrote: >> No need to fast forward, Jim. Thomas’ political trajectory was an >> outgrowth of the antipathy between the reformist and the >> revolutionary left which, as we know, was evident in the 1930’s and >> well beyond, predating their formal split into two rival >> Internationals following WWI. As a social democrat, Thomas came into >> conflict with the Communist Party and the smaller Trotskyist movement >> on ideological and practical grounds since all three political >> currents were competing with varying degrees of influence for the >> same working class constituency. > > People have strange ideas about Norman Thomas. You need to read "Not > Automatic", Sol Dollinger's book about the Flint sit-down strike. Thomas > saw eye to eye with the left wing of the SP that had considerable > strength in the area, including Genora Johnson. In terms of him voting > to expel the Trotskyists, if I had been around back then, I would have > voted for booting them. Anybody with political experience would no that > they were simply on a raiding party. The idea of building a purely > revolutionary party based on some "program" (namely a bunch of ideology > cobbled together from various holy texts) is bunkum as Henry Ford put > it. For better or for worse, revolutionary parties are never pure. They > will always include a right faction because that reflects the realities > of class composition in the proletariat. Lenin battled with Julius > Martov worse than fights I've had with people on the Internet but always > considered the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks as belong to the same party. > Pham Binh and Lars Lih got that right, whatever else they got wrong and > that's aplenty. > _______________________________________________ > pen-l mailing list > pen-l@lists.csuchico.edu > https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
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