[Marxism] In Defense of Harrington and American

[Louis Proyect]

Bhaskar Sunkara wrote:
  > Labor parties aren't built from nothing, mass socialist parties 
aren't built
> from nothing---- they are formed from where workers are.  Die Linke came
> from SPD.  During May in France 1968, workers went to the already
> established parties of the left-- same in Portugal in the 1970s, in Spain in
> the 1930s--- workers don't go over to a small sect that gets bigger over
> time.  Revolutionary parties like the Bolkseviks come from a mass
> organization-- they aren't borne through slow and steady recruitment, a good
> line and a revolutionary newspaper (the ISO method, the SWP method)

Bhaksar, all of this is true but it has nothing to do with the 
Democratic Party. Every process described above takes place *within* the 
workers movement. The SPD was based on the German trade unions, for example.

Just a couple of things have to be clarified, however. The Bolsheviks 
did not come from a mass organization. There was in fact *no* 
organization in Czarist Russia to speak of. There were just scattered 
pro-socialist intellectuals and workers, just as is the case in many 
countries today. Lenin's goal was to unite these activists through a 
national organization that communicated through Iskra. His opponents 
were against created a nation-wide organization.

One thing you are saying is correct. You might expect some members of 
the DP to come over to the side of the workers movement as class 
polarization deepens in the U.S. The same phenomenon took place in the 
1850s with the development of the Republican Party. Some politicians 
were formerly DP'ers, such as Abe Lincoln. My recommendation in 1850 
would have been, however, to build the abolitionist movement and not 
join a pro-slavery party like the Democrats in order to woo some people 
to an anti-slavery perspective. That is the position that Marxists are 
in today. We are trying to provide the advance guard of a movement 
opposed to wage slavery today.

If you think that some purpose is served by working in the DP, there's 
not much we can do to persuade you otherwise. I would remind you, 
however, that this mailing list is fairly hostile to that perspective. I 
say that as someone who founded it and has been moderating it since 
1998. Perhaps you are trying to solidify your thinking around these 
questions by going into the lion's den. If that's the case, please feel 
free to do so but as is always the case with Marxmail interminable 
debate is frowned on.