[Marxism] On the Democratic Party question

[Joaquin Bustelo]

It's interesting to see how the discussion I tried to start around the state
of the U.S. Left devolved into one about the Democratic Party, and how
quickly various folks have rushed to the barricades to defend the positions
they have held for the last few decades. 

Essentially, for most of us trained in the Trot tradition, that position is
that the Democratic Party is a bourgeois party and therefore voting for it
or supporting it in any way, shape or form is absolutely and utterly out of
the question as a matter of "principle."

I think this position is wrong. How and whether you vote in bourgeois
elections --bourgeois electoral farces-- is strictly and solely a tactical
question. Marx voted for bourgeois parties, Lenin voted for bourgeois
parties and Fidel was the candidate of a bourgeois party for political
office. They may have been good tactics or bad tactics, highly productive or
counterproductive, but they were just that, tactics, nothing more. All this
crap I was taught in the SWP that there is a "CLASS LINE" in elections
because elections are about which class shall rule is nothing but the most
abjectly pauperized electoral cretinism imaginable.

The SWP especially cooked up this cockamamie "theory" about what was really
a "workers" party and what wasn't by which you could determine what was
"permissible" or not, from a "class" point of view. So for example, if you
wanted to vote for some disgusting Stalinist hack or social-democrat traitor
to the workers movement, that was OK, but calling for a vote for Fidel in
the 1952 Cuban elections, or for comrade sister Cynthia McKinney in the last
several elections to the House of Representatives in Georgia's 4th
Congressional District --which has been my district for almost 20 years--,
THAT would be "crossing class lines." Go figure!

And then there's the other side, the minority I suspect on this list, that
wants to "orient" to the Democrats --not the politicians, oh no, of course
not!-- just the base. I'll just say this: history has shown pretty
convincingly that the Democratic Party is the roach motel of social
movements and radical political activists. Folks check in, but they don't
check out. 

But things are not that simple. The reality is --and this is especially
BLINDINGLY obvious in the South-- that Black people, the Black community,
has channeled its fight for the democratic right to political representation
in and through the Democratic Party. That is just a fact.

I do not believe it can be justly said that Black people made a mistaken
choice in doing this, because historical development and social conditions
left them few other good choices. It isn't good, fair or just that this is
the way things turned out, but it IS the way they turned out.

It is, I believe, a very substantial political error to approach the
tactical question of what to do in elections, and most of all in local
elections, without taking this FACT into account. 

Fortunately, the U.S. Left is weak, so weak, in fact, that by and large
these questions do not arise as practical questions for us. I say
"fortunately" because I'm certain the revolutionary left would MOSTLY have
gotten it wrong, and counterposed "class" abstractions to the actual forms
that the drive by Black people for political representation takes. And not
just Blacks.

And let me give a concrete example. In Georgia right now, there are only two
Latinos in the state legislature, a Republican gusano who might as well be
wearing sheets, and the Hon. State Rep. Pedro Marín. Pedro is a good,
socially minded guy who has long been involved in the Latino community. He
is not a radical, he is not a militant, and I would say he's not even very
political in the way we tend to think of it. 

He is Puerto Rican and very "white looking" which I'm sure was a factor in
the Democrat powers-that-be deciding that they should convince him to run
and backing him for an open seat in a mostly Democrat state house district.
But he also identified with the community, views himself as the only voice
of the Latino community in this legislature, and does try to represent and
speak for the community and its interests. And he is involved as part of the
community. He doesn't just come to the demonstration to grandstand on the
stage, he comes to planning meetings and interacts, discusses things.

There are things that community leaders have wanted him to do in the
legislature that he has considered impolitic or suicidal given his district,
and he has been upfront and honest and willing to talk about that. On one or
another occasion he's told the community leaders that he considered some
step, like an economic boycott or a specific protest rally at some point to
be ill-advised, but he has always kept that "in the family" (as do we all)
and not gone opportunistically to the Anglo press to sell himself as the
"good" Latino that opposes these dangerous radicals. He is far, far from the
ideal sole representative of our community in the legislature, but he is, to
the extent he feels he can be, an honest and genuine one. 

This last election (2006) Pedro faced a serious fight in the primary. If
there had been a socialist organization here substantial enough to have had
to concern itself with politics at this level, I think it would have been
duty-bound to support Pedro WITHIN the Democratic Party primary, simply and
solely on the basis of the democratic right of the (my guess) one and a half
million Latinos in this state to political representation. And there are
also a couple of Black state legislators --much more radical than Pedro,
BTW-- who have gone out of their way to defend/represent and especially
allow our community leaders to speak at things like legislative hearings and
to march and demonstrate when this has been challenged. And had they been in
a fight for re-election, I think the Latino community's right to
representation --even when it is by proxy, by some fairly righteous Black
legislators-- would have compelled a large socialist group (so that it is
really involved in politics at this level) to back them also. And I think on
many levels of state/local government all over the place we'd run into those
sorts of situations, where the individuals involved in a local race make a
difference --no, not all the difference in the world, not by a long shot,
not even close-- but SOME, and the "difference" involved relates directly
and immediately to the right of oppressed communities to representation. 

And this NOT NOT NOT based on the Democrats being quintessentially EITHER a
"bourgeois" party OR some sort of multiclass "popular front" within which we
support the more "left leaning" or "progressive" forces. In the example I
described, it is a concrete question of tactics and even personalities given
the situation of the Latino community in this state, which is fairly
desperate. Of course, this doesn't mean I'd make re-electing Pedro or the
Black legislators the AXIS of the struggle for immigrant rights, or
organizing in the Latino community, nor anything else like that, as the CP
tends to do in relation to the war. 

But these are concrete tactical questions of a kind with perhaps more
similarity to who to vote for in a union election, and it is a mistake to
liquidate the concrete questions and issues posed in a specific local
election into abstract generalities about the bourgeois character of the
Democratic Party when the issue that is posed concretely is the historical
denial of representation and a voice to oppressed nationalities.

On that more generalized sort of level, presidential or overall senate/house
general elections, what is striking about the discussion on this list is
that no one as far as I can tell advocates the use of Lenin's tactic of
"critical support." If you read Lenin's pamphlet on ultraleft and similar
writings, you will see that Lenin considered parties like the British Labour
Party, etc., to be essentially bourgeois parties masquerading as workers
parties. And the tactic is simply pretend "support" as a way of getting a
hearing for unmasking the true bourgeois nature of these parties, as a way
of OPPOSING and COMBATING them. 

The SWP schema about only certain parties "qualifying" for being undermined,
opposed and fought with this particular tactical weapon makes no sense.

There is no continuum between "critical" SUPPORT (for example, SUPPORTING
Cynthia McKinney BECAUSE of many of her political positions and initiatives
that express the views and interests of the Black community and DESPITE her
running on the Democratic party electoral line) and CRITICAL "support" (like
a rope supports a hanging man) for some traitor, which we offer to
sugar-coat our ATTACK ON HIM/HER because a lot of working people still have
ILLUSIONS in that politician or party. It is not a matter of *degree*, a
60-40 support/criticism ratio versus a 40-60 ratio or something like that.
They are two fundamentally different political stances. One is GENUINE
support, despite our having a number of criticisms; the other is FAKE
"support" to sugar coat our opposition and, if it comes to it, to give the
miscreant involved enough rope to hang him/herself by putting them into
office so they can reveal their REAL anti-Black, anti-woman, anti-worker and
so on politics.

And for this reason, Lenin's CRITICAL "support" is JUST as applicable to
individuals within a party or to wings of a party, because what drives the
tactic is the clash between the *illusions* that working and oppressed
people have in some individuals or political formations and the
bourgeois/oppressor interests that those individuals or political formations
really serve. 

IMHO, there has never been a finer and more supple application of this
tactical idea than in the brilliant tactics followed by Fidel and his team
in 1959, in insisting that all the heroes of petty-bourgeois democracy take
the "power" which allowed them all to be exposed as essentially
anti-national and counter-revolutionary in the space of a few months. And
the most brilliant master-stroke of all was Fidel's resignation as Primer
Minister in July of 1959 in protest of the President's refusal to push
through the agrarian reform, essentially "allowing" the government to be a
creature of bourgeois/landlord/imperialist forces, and thereby opening the
door to its reconstitution under the hegemonic influence of the
revolutionaries. 

There were three essential "moments" or stages of this. The first was the
ostentatious and demonstrative refusal of the revolutionary forces to take
power directly into their OWN hands, saying, in essence, we didn't lead the
struggle to overthrow Batista to benefit us personally by getting high
government posts, which is what everyone else had always done in neocolonial
Cuba. The revolutionaries said, these are the people and parties that have
traditionally projected themselves as being for progressive social change,
and which the masses look to -- they will be in charge of making the
changes. This was accompanied by an all-out propaganda and agitational
offensive by the revolutionaries about what sort of change Cuba needed. In a
sense, it was the OPPOSITE of a bourgeois electoral campaign, in that
instead of saying "put me in so I can carry out such-and-such a policy" it
was "support the people already in government in carrying out such-and-such
a policy." 

The second stage came when, after a month or two, Fidel became prime
minister (originally he had just been minister of the Revolutionary Armed
Forces). That stage was when it became obvious that by themselves, the
traditional politicians COULD NOT formulate and carry out the needed
revolutionary measures, the direct participation of the new revolutionary
elements alongside the traditional politicians was needed. 

And the third stage came when the traditional politicians showed themselves
to be not just inadequate but the real, actual obstacles and enemies of
revolutionary change, and it took the form of Fidel's resigning to once
again show it wasn't a question of "the bearded ones" wanting to have high
posts. On the contrary. Fidel resigned arguing that it would have been wrong
and disloyal of him AS PRIME MINISTER to criticize the president for
blocking implementation of the agrarian reform. He resigned so he could
mobilize the people to convince the president to carry out the agrarian
reform as it should be carried out.

What makes the tactics used so extraordinary is that Fidel, after Batista's
overthrow, could simply have proclaimed himself president and none would
have questioned it; he could have declared himself King, Emperor and
Defender of the Faith to the unanimous hurrah of the Cuban people. His
GIGANTIC prestige and moral authority dwarfed those of the insignificant
pigmies of petty-bourgeois democracy. 

But the revolution that Fidel and his friends saw as necessary could not be
decreed "from above": it had to be conquered from below. The agrarian reform
--which was the heart of it-- could not be simply a "law." It had to be a
struggle in which certain people SEIZED THE LAND from certain other people.
It was essential that the masses of people not merely acquiesce, support or
even applaud revolutionary decrees, but actually CARRY THEM OUT ON THE
GROUND. 

Reconfiguring the political upsurge that led to Batista's downfall as a mass
social movement to carry out the revolutionary changes on the ground is what
these tactics were all about. The point wasn't changing the name plate on
the door to the Cuban equivalent of the oval office, but making the people
the protagonists in changing society. 

That is why it was so important that the masses drove out first the
bourgeois prime minister. Why it was important that Fidel resign so mass
protests and pressures could drive out the bourgeois president, rather than
Fidel, as leader of the revolution, simply remaining as Prime Minister and
decreeing the revolutionary overthrow of the provisional president in July
of 1959, which he certainly could have done and would have gotten away with,
as a practical matter.

I highlight this because, at bottom, Leninist CRITICAL "support" isn't
really about the individual, faction or party targeted, but about the
masses. 

There was no "principle" involved in January of 1959 when Fidel insisted
that a cabinet of bourgeois democrats take power; nor a few weeks later,
when he became Prime Minister to drive through the first revolutionary
measures (cutting rents and essentially taking over the phone and electric
companies); nor in July when he resigned to force a showdown around the
agrarian reform. They were all just tactical maneuvers at the service of a
strategic line, of breaking the masses from their illusions in
petty-bourgeois democracy and cohering them around a political pole that
really stood for the revolutionary transformation of Cuban society. 

There is no law that says you can't apply a tactical of critical "support"
in fighting the influence over the masses of Democrat bourgeois politicians
("Support," as Lenin said, like a rope supports a hanging man). It is not
"unprincipled." It's precisely what Stan Goff, for example, advocated prior
to the November 2006 elections for Congress, although for a number of
specific reasons I did not think the tactic had as wide an applicability as
he did. 

Yet it is a variant completely absent from the discussions on this list,
even though Lenin's MOTIVATIONS for applying critical support as a tactic
certainly are relevant.

Joaquín