[Marxism] On the Democratic Party question

[Haines Brown]

> Unfortunately, the rest of his comments are based on ignorance of
> the GP, such as suggesting that they are funded by the
> petit-bourgeois.  If only.  They have very little funding at any
> level.  If HB and others would like to provide "critical support" to
> the GP, I suggest they write their state GP a check and include
> their criticism in the "Note" field of the check.

This remark is directed at my own comment. It is very true that I'm
ignorant of the Green Party, other than a single run here several
years ago. I doubt very many are aware of them in my neighborhood. I'm
not sure they would have much potential in the city as a whole.

I can't recover my original statement, but I hope it was expressed in
terms such as that I _suspected_ its support was petite-bourgeois. Of
course, I have no way of really knowing. My suspicion is based on
their one effort in local politics, where the activists nervously
entered my neighbood to drum up support and quickly beat a retreat.

I know enough about politics to say that no party can run any kind of
campaign, even put out literature, without money or donations in
kind. Buttons, posters, mailings, flyers in any real quantity, TV and
newspaper ads, food, palm cards, even poll standers and canvassers
these days cost enormous amounts of money. The money has to come
from somewhere. I've particiapted in a wining door-to-door grassroots
campaign and so know it can be done without much money, but that was
many years ago; as a practical matter, you can't do it today. To get
flyers for mass demonstation, we once had to persuade an employee to
let us into a corporate headquaters to run their photocopier through
the night, exhausting their stock of paper. But I don't think you
could get away with something like that these days. I'm not saying
that a low-cost popular campaign couldn't happen at some future date,
but it's not realistic here now.

I can't give the Greens support here because they are not
participating in the current campaign. Should they do so in the
future, of course I'm willing to listen and lend support if they seem
better than the competition.  

-- 
 
       Haines Brown, KB1GRM