[Marxism] On the Democratic Party question

[Louis Proyect]

Marvin Gandall wrote:
> Louis' mistake is in believing this situation would change if only the
> Cynthia McKinneys would leave the Democrats. But she is more a reflection
> than a cause of the DP's attraction to these constituencies. They look to
> the DP not because they are somehow "misguided", but because they correctly
> perceive it to be the only available means they have in this period to
> defend their gains against right-wing assaults, and to perhaps add to these
> gains.

But the source of these attacks is not wicked Republicans but the 
capitalist system. It miseducates workers to advise them to vote for a 
ruling class party since it is a basic institution of the capitalist 
system. As someone once said (Debs probably), why would you vote for 
your boss on election day?

> While some individuals might be drawn to a more straight-talking
> Camejo or a Nader or a Green party slate led by McKinney, so long as there
> exists no US third party with even the limited national representation of
> Canada's NDP, the groups they belong to will not vote in any significant
> numbers for them.

Actually the Greens made a very good showing in 2000. That's the main 
reason that a 5th column within the Greens combined with DP lawyers and 
honchos to strangle the infant in its crib. Sooner or later there will 
be a baby with strong enough teeth to bite back. Because the Greens are 
so filled with health food store owners, social workers and programmers, 
it tends to vacillate. If workers ever mount their own electoral 
challenge to the ruling class parties, it will surely be more resolute.

> In fact, they act on entirely contrary assumptions: that demonstrations are
> an adjunct to political action, not a subsitute for it; that legislative,
> regulatory, and judicial outcomes are not irrelevant to their interests;
> that these outcomes are shaped by the political composition of these
> agencies; and that they have more to lose with Republicans rather than
> Democrats in control of them.

But the goal posts keep shifting. In 1955, Eisenhower would have been 
pilloried out of American politics if he proposed an income tax "reform" 
that Democrats have routinely voted for in the 1980s through today. 
Clinton infamously said that "we are all Eisenhower Republicans" when he 
should have been referring to Coolidge or Hoover. When politics keeps 
shifting to the right, the argument that the Democrats are worth 
supporting because they are not as wicked as the Republicans is a 
sterile one. Clinton abolished welfare, pushed through NAFTA and would 
have "reformed" social security if the Monica Lewinsky scandal hadn't 
gotten in the way. And this sleazy bastard is represented in the 
bourgeois media as the first "Black president". If I am the only person 
in the US who insists on calling him an enemy of working people, so be it.