Re: [Marxism] Rethinking Voting for Democrats
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. * Yesterday Ralph Johansen raised two issues: how to address the Sanders enthusiasts; and what about the Democratic Party majority who are wary of Sanders’ far-reaching reforms? I’ll take up just the first for now. Agreed, the Bernie activists aren’t bound by the No Vote for Capitalist Parties principle. This particular document wasn’t addressed to them directly, although it does indicate our approach. It was addressed to a left audience (and therefore posted here) in order to explain why our traditional position needs changing – a position we’ve shared with many on the left. The Sanders movement is an important development that no one on the left, including my group, found a satisfactory (i.e., revolutionary) way to connect with. The DSA by and large dove in uncritically. The ISO in 2015-16 stayed aloof, counterposing the Green Party. But that went nowhere, since the Sanders activists believed that his campaign offered genuine hopes of transforming America politics and achieving concrete reforms that could relieve the economic precariousness they were facing. The Greens weren’t a contender. Socialist Alternative straddled those two approaches, pretending not to be working in the Dem Party but in reality behaving more like DSA. Both SAlt and the ISO called for Sanders to run independently, knowing full well (I assume, since he made it absolutely clear) that he would support the Democratic nominee, both last time and this. That meant reinforcing illusions in bourgeois politics. What should have been tried, in my opinion, is an approach like Lenin’s “critical support.” Not just offering a few criticisms (or even worse, “reserving the right to criticize” without doing so), but telling the truth about the racist, imperialist, anti-working-class Dem Party and the candidates who accommodate to it. We and others could not get much of a hearing if we said it’s a capitalist party so don’t vote for its candidates. We might have gotten a hearing if we’d said, OK, let’s put Sanders to the test of office. Let’s elect him and see whether the Democrats adopt his program and whether he mobilizes his movement to come out into the streets to fight for it. He hasn’t done that so far, even though there were several key opportunities during Trump’s reign when that deserved to be done. Why hasn’t he? Because his strategy is purely electoral. His “political revolution” means political in the everyday bourgeois sense, i.e.,electoral. But his supporters will more easily see the limitations of his strategy if he gets into office. That would be a step forward toward creating an independent working-class party. Now that Sanders is in all likelihood out of the race, the issue for the Sanders activists is what to do next. This I think our statement does deal with. We’re not advocating critical support for Biden in the Leninist sense. Voting for him would be purely defensive, to get rid of Trump. A few years ago it might have been comforting to think that Trump’s incompetence tempered his malevolence. In the present crisis they reinforce each other. Keeping him in power would not only boost the drive to autocracy, as we argue in our statement. It could doom us all. _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Rethinking Voting for Democrats
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 do confess to having one single ounce of sympathy for people making this point. Calls to deny votes to the class enemy are not impressive coming from people who are not bending every effort to provide the workers with an alternative. In Lenin's day, there was a Socialist Party running someone like Debs, even if he was behind bars. Americans on this list should ask themselves why there is no united socialist effort when it comes to elections here. Solidarity, Mark L. _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Rethinking Voting for Democrats
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. * Walter Daum wrote Really what? That’s a neat little article by Lenin, concisely dissecting the U.S. bourgeois parties of his day. It doesn’t say anything about tactically voting for one of them to stop the other, but I assume he was against, as was Debs. He doesn’t suggest that the Dems were a lesser evil than the Repubs, or vice versa. Lenin had equally strong denunciations of the bourgeois parties of his own country, Russia, and there, under specific circumstances, he advocated a defensive vote for Cadet candidates to stop the Black Hundreds from taking office. So where’s the principle of *never* voting for a bourgeois candidate?-- The principle of *never* voting for a bourgeois candidate may be beside the point. What of the people who called and knocked on doors and posted signs and generally busted ass and spent much enthusiasm in support of Bernie - whatever the intent or effect? What if in substantial numbers they decide that, if Biden doesn't buy the program that they worked so hard for, he doesn't buy their votes either? What if they they decide that Biden is part of the problem, another messenger boy fronting for the implacable enemy. And voting for the lesser evil has invariably left us further from our goal of working class emancipation. Are they going to somehow listen up and follow your advice, and put defeat of Trump up front as you advocate (or is it just this tiny choir of ex-Trots that you address)? So long as the preponderance who vote are not buying into even a mild reform program in their interests and are timorous about the consequences, who apparently comprise in their numbers older, self-indulgent, pro-military, xenophobic members of the middle class in the US (the 20% that follows on after the 1% because they still visualize the benefits to them of the power of US capital - and who vote in line with that interest) how then do we bring about change? By, in our ineffectual numbers, joining them? CBS conducted an exit poll after one of the recent primaries, in which one of the questions asked was would you prefer a candidate who a) reflects the policies of Obama, b) is more liberal, c) is more conservative? The reported answers were a) 49%, b) 37%, and c) 14%. And that's just the Democrats. -- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Rethinking Voting for Democrats
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 3/16/20 5:40 PM, Walter Daum via Marxism wrote: It doesn’t say anything about tactically voting for one of them to stop the other, but I assume he was against, as was Debs. You forgot to include the word "explicitly" after the word "anything" above. _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Rethinking Voting for Democrats
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. * Really what? That’s a neat little article by Lenin, concisely dissecting the U.S. bourgeois parties of his day. It doesn’t say anything about tactically voting for one of them to stop the other, but I assume he was against, as was Debs. He doesn’t suggest that the Dems were a lesser evil than the Repubs, or vice versa. Lenin had equally strong denunciations of the bourgeois parties of his own country, Russia, and there, under specific circumstances, he advocated a defensive vote for Cadet candidates to stop the Black Hundreds from taking office. So where’s the principle of *never* voting for a bourgeois candidate?-- On 3/16/20 1:48 PM, Louis Proyect via Marxism wrote: From: http://lrp-cofi.org/statements/elections-capitalist-parties.html "Our reconsideration of the principle of not voting for capitalist parties is yet to be concluded, but our study of the history of the Marxist movement has confirmed that the proponents of this principle, ourselves included, have perpetuated a good deal of mythology. "We do not know how or when the principle became the common view of whole sections of the U.S. far left, including just about all Trotskyists. To the best of our knowledge, no such principle was ever cited by our classical Marxist teachers: Marx, Engels, Luxemburg, Lenin or Trotsky." Really? V.I. Lenin, The Results and Significance of the U.S. Presidential ElectionsPravda No.164, November 9, 1912 _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Rethinking Voting for Democrats
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 3/16/20 2:58 PM, Michael Meeropol via Marxism wrote: Louis might know the answer Just out of curiosity, how many people are in this group anyway? I'masking because, as a rule of thumb, the larger the organization the morepressures in faces to engage in this "rethinking Actually, Walter Daum, who got this thread going, is the leader of this group so he could tell us. I doubt that there are more than 25 members. _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Rethinking Voting for Democrats
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 might know the answer Just out of curiosity, how many people are in this group anyway? I'masking because, as a rule of thumb, the larger the organization the morepressures in faces to engage in this "rethinking _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Rethinking Voting for Democrats
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. * Not so much of a rethinking as a repositioning to the thinking of most Democratic voters: voting lesser-evil. And this is actually worse, because most of the latter insist that they are picking the best option within the race for a particular position. This discusses things in terms of the party. Just out of curiosity, how many people are in this group anyway? I'm asking because, as a rule of thumb, the larger the organization the more pressures in faces to engage in this "rethinking." _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Rethinking Voting for Democrats
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. * From: http://lrp-cofi.org/statements/elections-capitalist-parties.html "Our reconsideration of the principle of not voting for capitalist parties is yet to be concluded, but our study of the history of the Marxist movement has confirmed that the proponents of this principle, ourselves included, have perpetuated a good deal of mythology. "We do not know how or when the principle became the common view of whole sections of the U.S. far left, including just about all Trotskyists. To the best of our knowledge, no such principle was ever cited by our classical Marxist teachers: Marx, Engels, Luxemburg, Lenin or Trotsky." Really? V.I. Lenin The Results and Significance of the U.S. Presidential Elections Pravda No.164, November 9, 1912. Wilson, a “Democrat”, has been elected President of the United States of America. He has polled over six million votes, Roosevelt (the new National Progressive Party) over four million, Taft (Republican Party) over three million, and the Socialist Eugene Debs 800,000 votes. The world significance of the U.S. elections lies not so much in the great increase in the number of Socialist votes as in the far-reaching crisis of the bourgeois parties, in the amazing force with which their decay has been revealed. Lastly, the significance of the elections lies in the unusually clear and striking revelation of bourgeois reformism as a means of combating socialism. In all bourgeois countries, the parties which stand for capitalism, i.e., the bourgeois parties, came into being a long time ago, and the greater the extent of political liberty, the more solid they are. Freedom in the U.S.A. is most complete. And for a whole half-century—since the Civil War over slavery in 1860–65—two bourgeois parties have been distinguished there by remarkable solidity and strength. The party of the former slave-owners is the so-called Democratic Party. The capitalist party, which favoured the emancipation of the Negroes, has developed into the Republican Party. Since the emancipation of the Negroes, the distinction between the two parties has been diminishing. The fight between these two parties has been mainly over the height of customs duties. Their fight has not had any serious importance for the mass of the people. The people have been deceived and diverted from their vital interests by means of spectacular and meaningless duels between the two bourgeois parties. This so-called bipartisan system prevailing in America and Britain has been one of the most powerful means of preventing the rise of an independent working-class, i.e., genuinely socialist, party. And now the bipartisan system has suffered a fiasco in America, the country boasting the most advanced capitalism! What caused this fiasco? The strength of the working-class movement, the growth of socialism. The old bourgeois parties (the “Democratic” and the “Republican” parties) have been facing towards the past, the period of the emancipation of the Negroes. The new bourgeois party, the National Progressive Party, is facing to wards the future. Its programme turns entirely on the question whether capitalism is to be or not to be, on the issues, to he specific, of protection for the workers and of “trusts”, as the capitalist associations are called in the U.S.A. The old parties are products of an epoch whose task was to develop capitalism as speedily as possible. The struggle between the parties was over the question how best to expedite and facilitate this development. The new party is a product of the present epoch, which raises the issue of the very existence of capitalism. In the U.S.A., the freest and most advanced country, this issue is coming to the fore more clearly and broadly than anywhere else. The entire programme and entire agitation of Roosevelt and the Progressives turn on how to save capitalism by means of bourgeois reforms. The bourgeois reformism which in old Europe manifests itself in the chatter of liberal professors has all at once come forward in the free American republic as a party four million strong. This is American style. We shall save capitalism by reforms, says that party. We shall grant the most progressive factory legislation. We shall establish state control over all the trusts (in the U.S.A. that means over all industries!). We shall establish state control over them to eliminate poverty and enable everybody to earn a “decent” wage. We shall establish “social and industrial justice”. We revere all reforms—the only “reform” we don’t want is expropriation of the capitalists! The national wealth of the U.S.A. is now
[Marxism] Rethinking Voting for Democrats
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. * Along with much of the left in this country that identifies with the tradition of revolutionary Marxism, the LRP has considered it a basic principle to oppose voting for capitalist parties. We have condemned such voting as “crossing the class line” and for undermining the struggle for independent working-class political organization and action. In the United States, the Democratic Party postures as the friend of labor, women and minorities, so we have had to warn especially against illusions in it. Along with the openly right-wing Republicans, the Democrats are in fact a major party of the U.S.’s imperialist capitalist class, one of the bloodiest ruling classes in history. ...Nevertheless, two major factors have prompted us to reconsider the principle of not voting for capitalist parties and to consider a range of possible electoral tactics that the principle would generally forbid. http://lrp-cofi.org/statements/elections-capitalist-parties.html _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com