[Marxism] An analysis of the DP convention that works better

[Louis Proyect]

Marvin wrote:
>But more than 80 years later, in a much less favourable period,
>when the USSR and international socialist movement have both disappeared,
>when workers are much less inclined to leave their existing bourgeois
>parties and leaders then they were then, when there are no longer mass
>Communist parties with parliamentary representation which they can look to
>as an alternative, how can we be so certain Lenin, in these circumstances,
>would move further to the left to embrace Pankhurst's uncompromising stance
>against any participation in these reformist parties?

I of all people do not advocate a mechanical adoption of Lenin's 
tactics, but I just wanted to remind comrades what Lenin said since 
they might confuse what you have written as being in that tradition. 
Of course, I do salute your candid admission that it is a departure 
from what Lenin believed, or even might have believed today. As I am 
sure you are aware, your recommendations are exactly that of the CP 
and the SP of the late 1930s, although including a caveat that they 
are only temporary. When the workers radicalize and the scales fall 
from their eyes, they will be open to full-throated Bolshevik 
agitation. Until that day arrives, it is better for us to join the 
Park Slope Democratic Party Club and do phone-banking for Obama. 
Speaking only for myself, I'd rather eat rat stew.

>I think it was Lenin who said "the only principle is that which moves the
>struggle forward; all else is tactics", or something along those lines. If
>he didn't say it, I can imagine him doing so.

Perhaps you are thinking of this:

"The movement is everything, the final goal nothing". (Eduard Bernstein)

>  Louis derides such analysis such as
>"TINA", as if mockery settles the issue. But his solutions - that "the
>alternative is us" (TAIU) or, in his own version of stages theory, an
>intermediate left-liberal way station without mass support like the Green
>Party - hardly seems to me to settle the matter either.

I am hardly gung-ho on the Greens at this point, especially since a 
fucking Democratic Party Trojan Horse has helped to render it effective.