Re: Forwarded from Anthony (reply to Yoshie)

[Carrol Cox <cbcox@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Louis Proyect [Anthony] wrote:

>
> None of these differences - on the surface - seems to be serious enough to
> push them into an all out political struggle where they start to mobilize
> popular masses behind each other to slug it out.
>
> However, they came much, much closer to such tactics against each other
> than anyone thought possible in the recently concluded election.
>
> The Republicans organized gangs of thugs in Florida to intimidate the
> ballot counters in Dade county. And they did a lot more for months earlier
> to steal the election.

Do you really think mobilizing some thugs is in any way constitutes
mobilizing "popular masses behind each other to slug it out." The
only popular masses that could have been mobilized were blacks,
and quite obviously Gore much preferred losing to doing that.

There are *always* innumerable divisions, stresses, and strains
in any ruling class. That's what ruling classes do in their spare time,
fight each other. A strong social democratic party can often
take advantage (mostly for the advantage of party officials,
but to some extent for its working constituency), but we
aren't strong and we are not, I hope, social democratic. We
have nothing to gain by wheeling and dealing in the interstices
of relationships among the ruling classes.

When a ruling class is *really* divided, the result is either
popular revolution or a rightist coup of some kind. If making
a fuss about the electoral fuss recruits a few more cadre
or ups the morale of current cadre, or creates a show in
D.C. that the press can't entirely ignore, and which sent
the demonstrators home with renewed vigor, that would
be fine.

Only twice in U.S. history has there been significant
divisions in the ruling class: one led to the Civil War
and the other to the New Deal. Both ended in a
unified and strengthened ruling class.

There are simply no differences of principle within
u.s. politics today. That makes politics very dirty
and allows the politicians room to struggle mightily
for purely personal motives. But all the hurly-burly
(impeachments, stolen elections, who knows what
all will come next) should be seen as evidence of
the *lack* of serious differences rather than as
constituting serious differences.

One last comment. There may be some exceptions,
but just from my memory there have been few if
any mass struggles which did not catch their would-be
leaders by surprise. The Revolution certainly caught
Lenin by surprise. And the upsurges in the Chinese
countryside caught the Chinese CP by surprise --
otherwise Mao would not have had such a long
and difficult struggle to get his views on the importance
of that upsurge accepted. And King didn't lead the
struggle in Birmingham but had to be dragged into
leadership somewhat reluctantly. But neither was that
struggle "spontaneous" in any simple way. Many of
its local cadre had attended CP schools or conferences
or had other contacts with the old left. So we should
indeed keep looking for the upsurge that will catch
us by surprise, but not get so goggle-eyed looking
that we don't do any of the things (including theoretical
training and 'piddling practice' and working out of mutual
understanding) that will have us prepared when we are so
pleasantly surprised.

Carrol

P.S. On "miltary Keynsianism": The Democrats invented it,
and Carter's proposed budgets were pretty much what
Reagan instituted. And I believe Counterpunch or LBO or
both had stories  comparing Dem & Rep military Budge
proposals, and the Democratic proposals were larger. Bush
plans to appoint a war criminal as Secretary of State -- but
a war criminal who after his and the army's experience in
Viet Nam doesn't want to get tied up in a way that would
lead to U.S. casualties. I would expect more lip and less
bang in the military field from a Bush administration.

But again, this is petty politics on the margins. Nothing
that concerns the ruling class in any significant way. The
last time we had an former Chief of Staff as a Secretary
of State he [snicker] "gave away China" according to the
far right.