[Marxism] Tomorrow's third party debate...dead as a can of spam

[Aaron Aarons]

>Date: Mon, 20 Oct 2008 09:01:42 -0400
>From: "Mark Lause" <markalause at gmail.com>
>
>My views on the Greens are all over this list.  The idea of building
>the GPUS into a viable party is only an issue among the dogmatic
>socialists who've had no real experience with it as a national current
>and have recently deigned to notice it.
>
>Aaron tells us to speak truth to power without having explored the
>concept adequately.

AA: Please! I have NEVER, NEVER advocated that one should "speak truth to power"! Rather, at 04:04 -0700 2008/10/20, I wrote:
> better a party of one that speaks truth to the powerless than a reformist party of a million.

ML: The power that we wish to address are the masses of working people whose very votes Aaron disparages.

AA: Yes, I disparage their votes for several reasons, including:

1) The only "working people" who get to vote in U.S. elections are U.S. workers -- not, for the most part, the peasants and workers whose labor actually maintains the "American Way of Life".

2) Telling potential subversives that their votes really decide anything in the real world either makes them realize that you are a fool or undermines their own subversive potential.

ML: I see no virtue in speaking truth to power in a whisper, while many self-described socialists make whispering the real virtue.

AA: I don't advocate whispering either, except, of course, when one is planning a direct action of a military or quasi-military nature.

ML: Aaron's dismissal of vote-getting as the key concern for intervention in an American electoral process makes me if he's really thought this out.

AA: I've only held that position since 1956, so maybe I haven't had time to think it out.

ML: He makes an odd distinction between winning votes and winning people to ideas. In reality, much of the electorate does not need to be won to many of the ideas on which we agree should be done immediately--ending the war, socialized medicine, action on global warming, etc.

AA: So Mark Lause is, in fact, making a "distinction between winning votes and winning
people to ideas", implying that the latter is a done deal. But the ideas it is necessary to win people to are not "ending the war" and "action on global warming" in the sense of electing people who promise such things, but taking action outside of the electoral arena to advance those goals, or at least actively defending those who take such action -- mutineers, saboteurs, etc..

ML: The problem is not, as he poses it, teaching dunderheaded Todd Palins about such questions.

AA: When did I ever express an interest in "teaching dunderheaded Todd Palins" anything?

ML: Rather, we need to point them the direction of a solution.

AA: What do we mean, then, by "a solution"? Are we talking about coming up with immediate demands that don't reinforce the sense of imperialist entitlement that most U.S. workers have? I'm all for it, and we should discuss what such demands are and are not, but I don't see how any left electoral campaign is going to play a major role in advancing such demands. I do, however, think such agitational demands, and the reasons for advancing those demands and not others, should be part of the propaganda that a leftist running in an election makes.

ML: Most immediately, people with these ideas need to express them politically by not voting for the very co-authors of the present problems, people like Obama and the Democrats who remain committed to continue the wretched policies.

AA: Are we talking about policies or class rule?

ML: The more that focus their ballots and have a serious impact on the elections, the more voters will have to consider what they're doing rather than to respond with mindless habits. The impact we had on 2000 forced a discussion of sorts that has continued to go on in every workplace and neighborhood where progressive ideas are held.

AA: Which is why Nader got fewer votes in 2004 than in 2000?