[Marxism] Nader throws support to Edwards

[Ruthless Critic of All that Exists]

On Jan 2, 2008 7:32 AM,  <mlause at cinci.rr.com> wrote:

>  Eli Stephens <elishastephens at hotmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > I do know that more people have
> > attended rallies for Clinton, Obama, Edwards et al during the last year than
> > have attended antiwar rallies, BY FAR.
>
> You're not addressing my point, Eli.  The comparison with antiwar rallies is apples and oranges, but you must know that.
>
> A "progressive liberal base" would be functioning coherently and focusing on one or another of these candidates.

What do you think of the way the "netroots" coalesced around Howard
Dean's candidacy in the last election, organizing meetups in people's
houses after finding each other locally via the Internet?

It was not a working-class base, but it was *a* "progressive, liberal"
base and pretty coherent. The organizational model you're describing
seems to be more top-down (with union bosses involved) whereas the
netroots' organizing model seems to be more bottom-up, emergent.

As Marxists, we need to study bottom-up, emergent models of
organization closely in this period. Communication technology will
increasingly enable this kind of organization to occur in ways that
wasn't possible 100, 50 or even 10 years ago.