Re: [Marxism] DSA member Ocasio-Cortez elected (Jason)
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * On 7/13/18 7:08 PM, Jason wrote: I might do that at some point, but I want to be clear that is not an alternative--it is an evasion. It is you evading backing up your claims, explicit and implicit, that there is some kind of obvious tradition that revolutionary socialists don't vote for liberals (or however one prefers to phrase it). -Jason Hicks I am actually working on a longish article about all this, including very relevant material from August Nimtz's book on Lenin's electoral strategy. And stop telling me I am being evasive because I don't answer your questions to your satisfaction. That is just a cheap demagogic trick that won't work, especially on Marxmail where most people have a visceral hatred for the Democratic Party. _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] DSA member Ocasio-Cortez elected (Jason)
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * > Let me propose an alternative. Why don't you write a 2000-3000 word > article defending support for the Democratic Party and post it to the list? I might do that at some point, but I want to be clear that is not an alternative--it is an evasion. It is you evading backing up your claims, explicit and implicit, that there is some kind of obvious tradition that revolutionary socialists don't vote for liberals (or however one prefers to phrase it). -Jason Hicks _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] DSA member Ocasio-Cortez elected (Jason)
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * On 7/4/18 7:30 PM, Jason via Marxism wrote: You continue to evoke their authority against me without yet having produced a single substantive reference to back up your position. Let me propose an alternative. Why don't you write a 2000-3000 word article defending support for the Democratic Party and post it to the list? I have made all the points I want to make both in messages to the list and on my blog. Even though I think your ideas are not that different from Gus Hall's and Michael Harrington's, you obviously feel the need to convince people on this list who are fairly inoculated against both the CP and the DSA, at least on the electoral front. Say your piece and then let's move on to other things. _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] DSA member Ocasio-Cortez elected (Jason)
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * Louis, you call my references "obscure" and "Talmudic" then blithely say that those who advocate what I'm saying "have likely never read Lenin, Trotsky or Rosa Luxemburg," ignoring my references to those and related thinkers. You continue to evoke their authority against me without yet having produced a single substantive reference to back up your position. Perhaps I'm wrong--perhaps it's there. Then show me. But when you dismiss my actual references with your hand waving to their tradition without backing it up, you are engaging in confirmation bias and not reasoned discussion. Similarly, you cannot possibly have enough knowledge to call me "a case-hardened reformist". It might work to help you from examining conflicting evidence but it doesn't help the discussion and you cannot demonstrate that to be the case. -Jason Hicks _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] DSA member Ocasio-Cortez elected (Jason)
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * On 7/2/18 7:33 PM, Jason via Marxism wrote: It wasn't just the Dutch and the main condition was universal suffrage in this case but there were a range of conditions and considerations involved in other cases throughout the Second International. Also, while you're glib about the suffrage question, I think there is a power small-d democratic argument to made for socialists voting for the Democratic Party simply on democratic grounds given that various kinds of voter suppression affect the Democratic Party vote more so and purposively so. You keep coming up with these obscure references to Second International parties voting for liberals, with Lenin supposedly agreeing with you, Carl Davidson et al based on a single article from 1912 that is the calling card of Maoists like Mike Ely and people moving headlong into the Democratic Party like Pham Binh. Lenin wrote 100,000 words at least attacking the idea of voting for the Cadets and you come up with the same single article I've seen referenced by everybody calling themselves a Marxist or a socialist that favors an "inside-outside" strategy. On top of that you come up with an even more obscure reference to the Dutch social democracy in 1905. It's like this. If you want to ring doorbells for the Democratic Party, there's no need to be like an attorney digging through law books to dig up a precedent. Do you honestly think that anybody reading your emails will become converted to the Democratic Party because of a single article by Lenin that supposedly makes him identical to Martov? With 1500 subscribers to Marxmail, I doubt that there are 20 that would want to waste their time under any circumstances to volunteer for a DSA-backed candidate. Coming up with these Talmudic references would be the last thing in the world to convince someone to become the 2018 equivalent of Eugene McCarthy volunteers from 50 years ago. The people who ring doorbells and think of themselves as "Democratic Socialists" have likely never read Lenin, Trotsky or Rosa Luxemburg. For the rest of your email, you read a lot into the phrase "liberal workers’ government" as a reason to dismiss Lenin's arguments on the British Labor Party (which you have still not addressed directly in any substantive way). Further, this reference is misleading since your reference is incomplete. As John Riddell https://johnriddell.wordpress.com/2012/01/01/a-workers-government-as-a-step-toward-socialism/ documents, that version did not include the amendment that the first two types listed were "illusory" and were "in reality hidden coalition governments between the bourgeoisie and antirevolutionary workers’ leaders". I think what I wrote is crystal clear. When the Comintern referred to "bourgeois" parties in the 1922 article I cited, it was talking about the Democratic Party in the USA, the Liberal Party in England, not the Labour Party. It advocated the election or revolutionary seizure of power by an alliance of Communists and Social Democrats. You could understand why it was moving in this direction since a year later this was what nearly happened in Germany, if it wasn't for the stupidity of the German CP. A Social Democrat named Erich Zeigner, who was the governor of the state of Saxony, became convinced of the need to organize an uprising co-led by the CP and the SP. As Werner Angress points out in his great history of the German CP between 1919 and 1925, Zeigner called for expropriation of the capitalist class, arming of the workers and a proletarian dictatorship. In other words, there was zero differences between him and the CP on the goal but the uprising was stillborn because the CP had its head up its ass. So if things had not gotten so bollixed up, this would have led to a workers government. This is exactly what was needed. How anybody could twist the words of the 1922 Comintern article favoring such a strategy into ringing doorbells for the Democratic Party is beyond belief. Also, you still have not demonstrated that this is a "Menshevik electoral strategy" I'm talking about since it also reflects Bolshevik strategy and that of Luxemburg and others. How do you expect me or anybody else to convince you of anything? You are a case-hardened reformist. _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] DSA member Ocasio-Cortez elected (Jason)
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * Also, at the beginning of this thread John R wrote: "Regarding what Lenin said and how he saw the British LP: Lenin was in the habit of phrasing things very sharply, maybe even too sharply at times. I suspect that was because he was guarding so strongly against any tendency to fall into reformism." I would suggest its a dangerous habit to discount evidence that goes against one's worldview. Perhaps Lenin was bending the stick in calling the Labor Party a "thoroughly bourgeois party" (and note: I just quoted that phrase, but it was a whole speech on it and there are other references too) but if so, then find for me 1) where he argued that the Labor Party was a working-class party, and 2) where he based his arguments on working in and voting for it on that point. And again, this isn't to say "Lenin said X and so X is right" but that if comrades are going to argue "Y" and cite Lenin as an authority and call my strategy "Menshevik" or whatever, they should be able to produce some evidence or just openly say "Lenin was wrong, Luxemburg was wrong, I am proposing something new and different." -Jason Hicks _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] DSA member Ocasio-Cortez elected (Jason)
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * On Mon, Jul 2, 2018 at 10:35 AM, Louis Proyect wrote: > So, 113 years ago, the left-wing of the Dutch social democracy said it was > acceptable to vote for liberal candidates but only on the basis that they > were for universal suffrage. When universal suffrage in the USA is > abolished and we return to voting based on property rights, I too will vote > for any liberal who supports a return to universal suffrage. > It wasn't just the Dutch and the main condition was universal suffrage in this case but there were a range of conditions and considerations involved in other cases throughout the Second International. Also, while you're glib about the suffrage question, I think there is a power small-d democratic argument to made for socialists voting for the Democratic Party simply on democratic grounds given that various kinds of voter suppression affect the Democratic Party vote more so and purposively so. For the rest of your email, you read a lot into the phrase "liberal workers’ government" as a reason to dismiss Lenin's arguments on the British Labor Party (which you have still not addressed directly in any substantive way). Further, this reference is misleading since your reference is incomplete. As John Riddell https://johnriddell.wordpress.com/2012/01/01/a-workers-government-as-a-step-toward-socialism/ documents, that version did not include the amendment that the first two types listed were "illusory" and were "in reality hidden coalition governments between the bourgeoisie and antirevolutionary workers’ leaders". And so when you cite "The first two types of workers’ governments (the workers’ and peasants’ and the social-democratic/Communist governments) fall short of representing the dictatorship of the proletariat, but are still an important starting-point for the winning of this dictatorship" you miss that while it says "first two" it specifies types three and four in the list (perhaps because the process of amendment wasn't finalized), leaving out the first "liberal workers' government" which refers to the Labor Parties and on which your case rests. And so re: "So funny that someone so bent on proving Lenin was in favor of Menshevik electoral strategy would cite something he wrote in 1920 that reflected ultraleft thinking in the Kremlin.", are you saying Lenin was actually ultraleft in 1920 on the British Labor Party? If so, I'd like to see an argument as to why. Also, you still have not demonstrated that this is a "Menshevik electoral strategy" I'm talking about since it also reflects Bolshevik strategy and that of Luxemburg and others. -Jason Hicks _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] DSA member Ocasio-Cortez elected (Jason)
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * Regarding the liberal wing of the Democrats, Jason writes: "Since the point isn't to "support" that wing [and I think a lot of the problems in these discussions trace back to ambiguous words like "support" (Jason's brackets)] but first of all to recognize the fact that millions of people that would be the base of a mass socialist party vote forDemocrats out of fear of the alternative, so if your premise for building that party is to first convince them they should never vote for Democrats ever, you'll get just where you've gotten: nowhere. If you recognize that people want something better than the Democrats but also want to stop Republicans from becoming more powerful, and so you offer to build with them something better while voting for Democrats against Republicans when you can't get your own candidates elected without 'spoiling,' then you have a premise millions of people are actually looking for right now." I think a large part of the problem is that comrades are thinking in too general terms; they are not thinking about what are the concrete steps that can and should be taken now towards building a mass working class party. I have made a suggestion time and again: That DSA can and should run its own candidates as working class representatives for *local* office. I emphasize "local" because at that level if they concentrated their forces they would put on a credible campaign, one that would register on the radar screen of millions of workers and one that could possibly actually win. Here in Oakland, for example, that is doubly so since we have ranked choice voting. That means that even if a worker didn't think the DSA candidate could win, they could vote for her/him as #1 and vote for the liberal they thought could win as #2 choice. So why doesn't DSA do that? Yes, it *IS* a matter of "supporting" the liberal wing of the Democrats. How can they - or anybody else for that matter - run a candidate who, for example, takes up the issue of housing and gentrification (which is huge here) and shows concretely (by revealing the major donors) that the liberal Democrats who are running against her/him are agents of the real estate developers? How can they do that and make the links between that fact and the role of this wing of the Democrats in general and go from there to explaining that both parties are the parties of the real estate developers and the other owners of capital and, also, explain the role of the *entire* liberal wing of the Democrats, explain that our campaign is part of an effort to build an alternative to this party, including this wing... How can they do that but at the same time say, "but in the case of X and Y and Z (you fill in the blanks -- Ocasio-Perez and Jovanka Beckles, for example) I make an exception. These individual members of this wing of the Democrats are not representatives of big business and workers should support them? If you do that, then you are open to the question: *"Really? Then how about this other one and that other one? And furthermore, if you think these candidates can represent workers, then since we already have this wing of this established party, wouldn't it be much better to get more such candidates running in this wing?"* There simply is no answer to that. Which is why there never has been a serious, ground-level effort to start to build an alternative to the Democrats while supporting "some" Democrats at the same time. It's been advocated over and over again but never, ever done. What is it they say about repeating the same thing and expecting a different outcome? And, no, I'm not advocating repeating the same thing; what I'm advocating is taking a first step that has never been taken at least in my lifetime. John Reimann _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] DSA member Ocasio-Cortez elected (Jason)
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * On 7/2/18 9:31 AM, Jason wrote: The revisionist strategy was that they left "electors free to vote for any liberal candidate they liked" versus the left strategy of 1) having conditions [such as that the liberals were for universal suffrage] and 2) it being a party decision and a question of discipline. As that passage says: "The left, like the left in other parties, did not refuse, during the course of the elections, to support liberal candidates who took a stand in favour of universal suffrage against property-based electoral rights." Rosa Luxemburg supported this explicitly (see The Letters Of Rosa Luxemburg, pages 185-7). So, 113 years ago, the left-wing of the Dutch social democracy said it was acceptable to vote for liberal candidates but only on the basis that they were for universal suffrage. When universal suffrage in the USA is abolished and we return to voting based on property rights, I too will vote for any liberal who supports a return to universal suffrage. So the left strategy was that socialists were *under discipline* to vote for *certain* liberals. The revisionist strategy was that socialists were "free" to vote for any liberal, some of whom did not support universal suffrage. And on your other email about the British Labor Party: again, feel free to engage with Lenin's argument here: https://www.communist-party.org.uk/76-m-l-education/1933-lenin-on-labour-speech-on-affiliation-to-the-british-labour-party.html. It is generally a mistake to quote Lenin chapter and verse, especially when you can find statements that are contradictory. In 1922, just two years after the one you refer to above that characterizes Labour as "bourgeois", you can read the Communist recommendation of the workers government that was a departure from the ultraleft past. Keep in mind that the Comintern was deeply involved with the disastrous March Action in Germany that literally acted on the premise that Social Democratic workers were counter-revolutionary. It was the blow to German Communism that compelled a different road, incorporated in the United Front that Paul Levi fought for, and the workers government that was an extension of the United Front. All you need to do is read Theses on Comintern Tactics from 1922 (https://www.marxists.org/history/international/comintern/4th-congress/tactics.htm) to a different take on the Second International and Labour: "In place of a bourgeois/social-democratic coalition, whether open or disguised, Communists propose a united front involving all workers, and a coalition of all workers’ parties around economic and political issues, which will fight and finally overthrow bourgeois power. Following a united struggle of all workers against the bourgeoisie, the entire state apparatus must pass into the hands of a workers’ government, so strengthening the position of power held by the working class." also: "The first two types of workers’ governments (the workers’ and peasants’ and the social-democratic/Communist governments) fall short of representing the dictatorship of the proletariat, but are still an important starting-point for the winning of this dictatorship." Get it? Workers parties? That meant the Communists AND those parties that the idiotic ultraleftists operating under Bela Kun's putschist conceptions considered "bourgeois" just two years earlier. So funny that someone so bent on proving Lenin was in favor of Menshevik electoral strategy would cite something he wrote in 1920 that reflected ultraleft thinking in the Kremlin. Maybe, not so funny. _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] DSA member Ocasio-Cortez elected (Jason)
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * The revisionist strategy was that they left "electors free to vote for any liberal candidate they liked" versus the left strategy of 1) having conditions [such as that the liberals were for universal suffrage] and 2) it being a party decision and a question of discipline. As that passage says: "The left, like the left in other parties, did not refuse, during the course of the elections, to support liberal candidates who took a stand in favour of universal suffrage against property-based electoral rights." Rosa Luxemburg supported this explicitly (see The Letters Of Rosa Luxemburg, pages 185-7). So the left strategy was that socialists were *under discipline* to vote for *certain* liberals. The revisionist strategy was that socialists were "free" to vote for any liberal, some of whom did not support universal suffrage. And on your other email about the British Labor Party: again, feel free to engage with Lenin's argument here: https://www.communist-party.org.uk/76-m-l-education/1933-lenin-on-labour-speech-on-affiliation-to-the-british-labour-party.html . -Jason On Sun, Jul 1, 2018 at 6:57 PM, Louis Proyect wrote: > On 7/1/18 6:23 PM, Jason wrote: > >> >> Second, that's hardly my sole argument, given I gave other references to >> revolutionaries in the Second International supporting voting for liberal >> bourgeois parties. One can also see this in Shorske’s history and I can >> provide other references if needed. >> > > Look, your reference was to a Dutch party that, like Lenin's, was divided > over supporting bourgeois candidates. You simply found the Dutch equivalent > of the Mensheviks who backed the Dutch equivalent of the Cadets. Didn't you > understand that I would track down the reference? You are trying to > invalidate my claim that voting for liberals is a revision of Marxism by > referring to an author who describes exactly that strategy as revisionist? > Ridiculous. > > --- > > http://www.left-dis.nl/uk/dutchleft.pdf > > Although it was completely isolated, the Marxist minority [in other words, > the Dutch equivalent of the Bolsheviks] didn’t capitulate and resolutely > carried on fighting. From 1905 to 1907, the Marxist current found itself > confronted with a vigorous counter-offensive by the revisionists. The > parliamentary fraction, which was the real leadership of the party, went > further and further in collaborating with the bourgeoisie. In 1905, during > the elections for the provincial states, the revisionists raised the > question of supporting the liberals against the Anti-Revolutionaire Partij > (‘Anti-Revolutionary Party’ – ARP) government of Abraham Kuyper, which had > broken the transport strike. The left, like the left in other parties, did > not refuse, during the course of the elections, to support liberal > candidates who took a stand in favour of universal suffrage against > property-based electoral rights. It had adopted a resolution in this sense > during the 1905 Hague Congress: “[the Party] declares that during the > elections it will only support candidates who stand for the urgent > introduction of universal suffrage”. > > But for the Marxists, there could be no question of turning this tactical > and temporary support into a principle. Contrary to what Troelstra wished, > it was not at all a matter of calling workers to vote for “liberals of any > stripe”, even if they were anti-clerical. From a class standpoint, the > fight was not against a particular capitalist party but against capitalism > as a totality. In order to avoid being mixed up with the petty bourgeois > and small peasant elements, the workers had to be clear about their real > identity. As Pannekoek, Gorter and Van Ravesteyn wrote it, in a booklet – > ‘The Founding of the SDP’ – distributed to the German social democrat press > to explain the scission of 1909: “On every occasion the party must show the > workers that their enemies sit on the left side of parliament just as much > as on the right...”. > > But instead of respecting the resolutions of the Congress, the party > leadership, the parliamentary fraction and the socialist daily Het Volk > left socialist electors free to vote for any liberal candidate they liked. > Although firm on positions which had been classical ones within the > workers’ movement, the Marxists found themselves isolated from the working > masses. Troelstra played on this as much as he could. There were, however, > reactions within the party. > _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] DSA member Ocasio-Cortez elected (Jason)
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * On 7/1/18 6:23 PM, Jason wrote: Second, that's hardly my sole argument, given I gave other references to revolutionaries in the Second International supporting voting for liberal bourgeois parties. One can also see this in Shorske’s history and I can provide other references if needed. Look, your reference was to a Dutch party that, like Lenin's, was divided over supporting bourgeois candidates. You simply found the Dutch equivalent of the Mensheviks who backed the Dutch equivalent of the Cadets. Didn't you understand that I would track down the reference? You are trying to invalidate my claim that voting for liberals is a revision of Marxism by referring to an author who describes exactly that strategy as revisionist? Ridiculous. --- http://www.left-dis.nl/uk/dutchleft.pdf Although it was completely isolated, the Marxist minority [in other words, the Dutch equivalent of the Bolsheviks] didn’t capitulate and resolutely carried on fighting. From 1905 to 1907, the Marxist current found itself confronted with a vigorous counter-offensive by the revisionists. The parliamentary fraction, which was the real leadership of the party, went further and further in collaborating with the bourgeoisie. In 1905, during the elections for the provincial states, the revisionists raised the question of supporting the liberals against the Anti-Revolutionaire Partij (‘Anti-Revolutionary Party’ – ARP) government of Abraham Kuyper, which had broken the transport strike. The left, like the left in other parties, did not refuse, during the course of the elections, to support liberal candidates who took a stand in favour of universal suffrage against property-based electoral rights. It had adopted a resolution in this sense during the 1905 Hague Congress: “[the Party] declares that during the elections it will only support candidates who stand for the urgent introduction of universal suffrage”. But for the Marxists, there could be no question of turning this tactical and temporary support into a principle. Contrary to what Troelstra wished, it was not at all a matter of calling workers to vote for “liberals of any stripe”, even if they were anti-clerical. From a class standpoint, the fight was not against a particular capitalist party but against capitalism as a totality. In order to avoid being mixed up with the petty bourgeois and small peasant elements, the workers had to be clear about their real identity. As Pannekoek, Gorter and Van Ravesteyn wrote it, in a booklet – ‘The Founding of the SDP’ – distributed to the German social democrat press to explain the scission of 1909: “On every occasion the party must show the workers that their enemies sit on the left side of parliament just as much as on the right...”. But instead of respecting the resolutions of the Congress, the party leadership, the parliamentary fraction and the socialist daily Het Volk left socialist electors free to vote for any liberal candidate they liked. Although firm on positions which had been classical ones within the workers’ movement, the Marxists found themselves isolated from the working masses. Troelstra played on this as much as he could. There were, however, reactions within the party. _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] DSA member Ocasio-Cortez elected (Jason)
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * On 7/1/18 6:23 PM, Jason wrote: I don't see how it's a "sleight of hand" and I do not equate them. You're however welcome to engage with Lenin's argument that was based on considering the BLP to be a bourgeois party and still engaging in it and voting for it. So all parties except small radical parties in the world are bourgeois? Like the NDP and Trudeau's Liberal Party are both bourgeois? Allende's Popular Front and Pinochet? Mitterand's SP and Le Pen's National Front? The British Labour Party came into existence because workers fought to bring it into existence to defend their wages and working conditions. The Democratic Party, one of the longest running capitalist parties in the world, came into existence as the political instrument of the agrarian gentry. There was a direct lineage between slave-owner Thomas Jefferson to Andrew Jackson to Jefferson Davis. Not only did Andrew Jackson defend slavery, he also carried out a genocidal Indian removal in order to allow the cotton plantations to use tribal lands. Lenin denounced British Labour because it was opportunist. He also used the same language to denounce Leon Trotsky and the Mensheviks. He also denounced the German social democracy whose governor in Saxony became a key ally in the misbegotten revolutionary bid of 1923. Inside the left, you have family quarrels like these all the time. That anybody can equate British Labour with the Democratic Party in the USA just shows a stubborn adherence to the sort of opportunism Lenin fought his entire life. Then again, we are again talking about just another family quarrel. _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] DSA member Ocasio-Cortez elected (Jason)
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * LP: "That's because of your sleight of hand equation between the Democratic Party and the British Labour Party." I don't see how it's a "sleight of hand" and I do not equate them. You're however welcome to engage with Lenin's argument that was based on considering the BLP to be a bourgeois party and still engaging in it and voting for it. Second, that's hardly my sole argument, given I gave other references to revolutionaries in the Second International supporting voting for liberal bourgeois parties. One can also see this in Shorske’s history and I can provide other references if needed. -Jason _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] DSA member Ocasio-Cortez elected (Jason)
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * On 7/1/18 5:51 PM, Jason via Marxism wrote: However, I do think I have shown that such a position is consistent with the revolutionary socialist/Marxist tradition and that the idea that this is a break from "socialist electoral thinking at least until the rise of the Popular Front" is false. That's because of your sleight of hand equation between the Democratic Party and the British Labour Party. That is not consistent with Marxism but the political acrobatics of Gus Hall, Carl Davidson, et al. It always ends up with the same tired references to the 1912 stuff about Cadets and electors, Lenin's article on ultraleftism, Marx's support for Lincoln, etc. I've heard it 10,000 times. _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] DSA member Ocasio-Cortez elected (Jason)
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * I've waffled. With no working class party and our absurd party and voting system, what is someone like Ocasio-Cortez to do? Since there was a Democratic primary I take it that the other option would be attempting to run as an independent in the general? An issue I hope we will learn more about when Ocasio-Crotez is in office is how fundraising is done. I don't remember the article but I recall reading a detailed account of a congress person's day and that it is mostly calling donors or going to fundraisers. The question then is whether or not the person I'm voting for will be doing that or refuse, which then means the Democratic party would oppose them, but how different would that be from being an independent? We do need to win over the DSA to dedicate to building a working class party, but I don't know that today getting people elected as Democrats will actually harm this effort, which has a very long ways to go (hell, it isn't even the current DSA's plan), but does potentially lay groundwork through increasing our reach. It is going to be a fight to make a complete break from the Democrats and I don't know that the conditions are right yet to make it the highest priority. It should Tristan _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] DSA member Ocasio-Cortez elected (Jason)
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * LP: "You might think that you have come up with new excuses for voting for DP candidates but you are only trying to reinvent the wheel." To be clear, I am not claiming to have presented a full argument here for why I think a socialist strategy should at times include running as and voting for Democrats. However, I do think I have shown that such a position is consistent with the revolutionary socialist/Marxist tradition and that the idea that this is a break from "socialist electoral thinking at least until the rise of the Popular Front" is false. Re: John saying "please explain where and when any political force has ever done both - concretely organize for a mass working class party while supporting some Democrats." Whether it's been done in this country in regard to the Democrats or not, see my other emails to the list that it was the practice of the revolutionary wing of the Second International including the Bolsheviks to "concretely organize for a mass working class party while supporting some [liberal/bourgeois politicians]". re: "how can DSA and representatives of DSA clearly and concretely explain this when they are supporting candidates of that wing of the Democrats at the same time?" This requires a more extended discussion than I'll give it here but I don't think it's that hard. Since the point isn't to "support" that wing [and I think a lot of the problems in these discussions trace back to ambiguous words like "support"] but first of all to recognize the fact that millions of people that would be the base of a mass socialist party vote for Democrats out of fear of the alternative, so if your premise for building that party is to first convince them they should never vote for Democrats ever, you'll get just where you've gotten: nowhere. If you recognize that people want something better than the Democrats but also want to stop Republicans from becoming more powerful, and so you offer to build with them something better while voting for Democrats against Republicans when you can't get your own candidates elected without 'spoiling,' then you have a premise millions of people are actually looking for right now. -Jason _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] DSA member Ocasio-Cortez elected (Jason)
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * I have put forward a line of reasoning that I have yet to see anybody take up. To repeat: DSA could start by running its own candidates as working class representatives for local office. Those candidates could link up the local issues with the fact that the local Democratic politicians are representatives of big business, in particular (as is often the case) the real estate developers. In many if not most cases, these local Democrats are from the liberal/"progressive" wing of the Democratic Party. In this way, it can be shown that the entire party represents the owners of capital and the "progressive" wing is simply the bait for the trap. That means that wing entirely. But how can DSA and representatives of DSA clearly and concretely explain this when they are supporting candidates of that wing of the Democrats at the same time? How? Please, I'd like somebody to explain that to me, because in my mind the facts speak for themselves. DSA is proving in action that they cannot and will not do that. Please explain the flaw in this line of reasoning. And please explain where and when any political force has ever done both - concretely organize for a mass working class party while supporting some Democrats. John Reimann On Sun, Jul 1, 2018 at 10:23 AM, Jason wrote: > "is Jason trying to say that there's no difference between a working class > party, or the British Labour Party, and the Democratic Party?" > > > No, I am not trying to say that. What I am saying is those differences > can’t predetermine like a a cookie-cutter our tactics and strategy. > > > As I said [clumsily]: “[the class-basis of a party] did not tie down > [Lenin’s] thinking from considering a range of tactical and strategic > options--including working within and voting for--in relationship to other > parties, including bourgeois ones.” > > > Everything John R. and others have written recently re: the Democratic > Party does point to why we need to build a different political organization > than the Democratic Party, but what I see is a conflation of that larger > task with the idea that position then determines, without any further > analysis, how one votes in any or all elections. > > > -Jason > -- *“In politics, abstract terms conceal treachery.” *from "The Black Jacobins" by C. L. R. James Check out:https:http://oaklandsocialist.com also on Facebook _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] DSA member Ocasio-Cortez elected (Jason)
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * On 7/1/18 3:30 PM, Jason wrote: Do shout about the evils of the Democratic Party--I do. But recognize that that is not a strategy--and it is certainly not an "ABC" of socialism to mistake a catalogue of evils for a guide to strategy. -Jason Jason, I am old enough to have heard the same arguments from people in the DuBois Clubs 50 years ago. You might think that you have come up with new excuses for voting for DP candidates but you are only trying to reinvent the wheel. _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] DSA member Ocasio-Cortez elected (Jason)
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * LP: "I would not vote for any candidate who belonged to a party that..." When Lenin supported voting for and working within the British Labor Party, he did so knowing and critiquing the history of its pro-imperialist and reactionary leadership. What Trotsky once said on doing so seems relevant ( https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1936/xx/ilp.htm): “It is argued that the Labour Party already stands exposed by its past deeds in power and its present reactionary platform. For example, by its decision at Brighton. For us – yes! But not for the masses, the eight millions who voted Labour. It is a great danger for revolutionists to attach too much importance to conference decisions. We use such evidence in our propaganda – but it cannot be presented beyond the power of our own press. One cannot shout louder than the strength of his own throat.” Do shout about the evils of the Democratic Party--I do. But recognize that that is not a strategy--and it is certainly not an "ABC" of socialism to mistake a catalogue of evils for a guide to strategy. -Jason _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] DSA member Ocasio-Cortez elected (Jason)
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * On 7/1/18 3:12 PM, Jason via Marxism wrote: Let us as you say, not base our approach on chapter and verse and instead consider the situation Debs was in, which was fairly unique among countries with elections and a socialist left at that time, where you had two parties agree to a counterrevolutionary outcome to end Reconstruction, and further, the Democrats from their founding had been the more reactionary party, and yet--due to the particular history of the US and plantation slavery--they were the party that would feign to be more pro-"working class" and pro-union and thereby by-and-large ended up absorbing the initial attempts at reform or working class parties. Debs in my estimation was reacting, appropriately, to that history. I do not think that is the situation we are in today. Probably not but I would not vote for any candidate who belonged to a party that dropped atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that used chemical and biological weapons in Korea, that invaded Vietnam, toppled a democratically elected president in the Dominican Republic through a coup backed by the Marines, that terminated Aid to the Families of Dependent Children, and that has backed Predator drone attacks on Muslims across the planet. I don't give a shit if I remain unrepentantly the last Marxist in the USA and Bhaskar Sunkara becomes the Secretary of State in Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's cabinet in 2024. I'll be dead by then but certainly expect a revolutionary movement to have developed that understands the ABC's of socialism. _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] DSA member Ocasio-Cortez elected (Jason)
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * "If you see voting for Democrats as a tactical question, you are breaking with socialist electoral thinking at least until the rise of the Popular Front. For all the homage paid by Sanders, Jacobin and the DSA to Eugene V. Debs, his entire political career was devoted to running *against* the two parties of capitalism." If one wants to apply Debs's politics like a cookie-cutter, I am indeed breaking with it. I am not breaking with "socialist electoral thinking" in general for sure given that it wasn't the position of socialists in general nor of the revolutionary, Marxist wing in particular, to never-vote for capitalist parties. Let us as you say, not base our approach on chapter and verse and instead consider the situation Debs was in, which was fairly unique among countries with elections and a socialist left at that time, where you had two parties agree to a counterrevolutionary outcome to end Reconstruction, and further, the Democrats from their founding had been the more reactionary party, and yet--due to the particular history of the US and plantation slavery--they were the party that would feign to be more pro-"working class" and pro-union and thereby by-and-large ended up absorbing the initial attempts at reform or working class parties. Debs in my estimation was reacting, appropriately, to that history. I do not think that is the situation we are in today. -Jason _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] DSA member Ocasio-Cortez elected (Jason)
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * On 7/1/18 1:23 PM, Jason via Marxism wrote: Everything John R. and others have written recently re: the Democratic Party does point to why we need to build a different political organization than the Democratic Party, but what I see is a conflation of that larger task with the idea that position then determines, without any further analysis, how one votes in any or all elections. Of course it does. If you see voting for Democrats as a tactical question, you are breaking with socialist electoral thinking at least until the rise of the Popular Front. For all the homage paid by Sanders, Jacobin and the DSA to Eugene V. Debs, his entire political career was devoted to running *against* the two parties of capitalism. _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] DSA member Ocasio-Cortez elected (Jason)
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * "is Jason trying to say that there's no difference between a working class party, or the British Labour Party, and the Democratic Party?" No, I am not trying to say that. What I am saying is those differences can’t predetermine like a a cookie-cutter our tactics and strategy. As I said [clumsily]: “[the class-basis of a party] did not tie down [Lenin’s] thinking from considering a range of tactical and strategic options--including working within and voting for--in relationship to other parties, including bourgeois ones.” Everything John R. and others have written recently re: the Democratic Party does point to why we need to build a different political organization than the Democratic Party, but what I see is a conflation of that larger task with the idea that position then determines, without any further analysis, how one votes in any or all elections. -Jason _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] DSA member Ocasio-Cortez elected (Jason)
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * Regarding what Lenin said and how he saw the British LP: Lenin was in the habit of phrasing things very sharply, maybe even too sharply at times. I suspect that was because he was guarding so strongly against any tendency to fall into reformism. In any case, is Jason trying to say that there's no difference between a working class party, or the British Labour Party, and the Democratic Party? Here's the difference: When the British coal miners were out on strike in the early 1980s, in one region after another they turned to the local LP branches and those branches mobilized support for them - both money and also mobilized people for the picket lines. That was a natural development. In 1999, 2,000 carpenters conducted a wildcat strike in the SF Bay area against a poor contract that the leadership was shoving down our throats. I was the chairman of the strike committee that organized that strike. It would have seemed absolutely weird, a total disconnect, if I or anybody else had even suggested going to the local Democratic Party or any local Democrats for help. The difference, then, is this: When workers rise up, what organizations do they tend to turn to? What organizations are in their traditions? Which were developed out of the struggle of workers of the past? In the US, it is not and never has been the Democratic Party. Yes, workers voted for FDR in the 1930s, but the most advanced sectors moved time and again to build a working class alternative - a labor party. It was only the role of the bureaucrats, starting with John L. Lewis, and of the Communist Party that prevented a Labor Party from developing at that point. And it is the mass working class parties that serve as the collective memory of the working class. It is through these parties that the traditions of the class struggle are best carried. In fact, it is exactly because of the betrayals of these parties' leaderships that they have been so weakened and, as a result, those traditions are so weak. And today in the US? Today the Democratic Party serves to obscure that collective memory. It serves to blur the class divisions. And the "progressive"/liberal wing of the Democratic Party plays a decisive role in that process. John Reimann _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
