[Marxism] In Defense of Harrington and American

[Jim Farmelant]

On Thu, 1 Jan 2009 15:55:49 -0500 "Bhaskar Sunkara"
<bhaskar.sunkara at gmail.com> writes:
> The march to the right of the Democratic Party has to do with the 
> march to
> the right of ALL parties after the 1970s and the collapse of 
> keynesianism
> and the social democratic consensus.

I think that everyone here is agreed on that point.
But the strategy that you are arguing for has in
no way arrested or even slowed down this trend.

> 
> The strategy's focus isn't so much on realignment, but fostering a 
> division
> along ideological lines.  The weakness and failure of small numbers 
> of
> socialists to do this, doesn't show us that this isnt a more 
> probable way to
> build a mass party.

I think that you are assuming that the Democrats are
a membership party in much the same sense that
European political parties.  Actually, (and I think
lots of political scientists would agree with me
on this), the US is lacking political parties in that
sense.  As Lou explained earlier, when Americans
say that they are Democrats or Republicans, they
are really just expressing for Brand X over Brand Y,
and nothing more.  Nobody belongs to the Democrats,
in the same sense that a Brit might belong to the Labour
Party (although that party has gone a long way towards
becoming like the DP in the US) or a German might
belong to the SPD.  Those parties are membership
organizations.  People actually join up and pay dues.
As members they can join all sorts of local organizations
and can actually play some sort of role in the selection
of candidates and the drafting and adoption of platforms.
Both the Labour Party in Britain and the SPD in
Germany grew directly out of the workers movement,
and for many years, both parties were rooted directly
in the trade unions.  The same cannot be said for
the Democrats.  For the Democrats, the unions
are just another interest group among others;
no more and no less.

> 
> 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)
> 
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