[Marxism] Electoral politics

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

TONY ABDO: Both Louis Proyect and Walter Lippman, each in their own way,
show this tendency of retreat from previously held political positions
that many of the SWP asteroid comrades now engage in. Under the guise
that there is something special about the current political allignments
that justs makes their new found beliefs of flirting with alligning
themselves with a capitalist political party somehow urgent, these
comrades are doing all sorts of new twisting and turning. Louis Proyect
correctly calls for a taking "a clear class stand" and not voting DP or
RP. But he once also took "a clear class stand" while a member of the
SWP, against voting for third political parties and candidates that were
reform capitalist proponents, and without any base in the trade union
movement or within the national minority communities. This message is
now somewhat lacking in Lou's posts

REPLY: Actually, my views on such formations were clarified by reading I
did during Nader's last bid for President. First I took a close look at
the LaFollette campaign in 1924. LaFollette was a lifelong Republican
Senator who bolted from the party in a 3rd party bid. He was opposed by
the American CP, which was deeply sectarian at the time. However, the
Comintern finally became convinced that the relatively massive vote of
16.5 percent for LaFollette was an "important victory for the American
left". I agree.

In 1948 the Progressive Party ran Henry Wallace on essentially a New
Deal platform. The SWP opposed him, running its own characteristically
sectarian propaganda campaign. After studying the Progressive Party bid,
I became convinced that it was worth supporting as many of the
Cochranites did at the time. While most people are aware of Wallace's
resistance to the Cold War and to some of the more egregious anti-union
policies of the Democrats and Republicans, it is important to stress the
degree to which his campaign embraced the nascent civil rights movement.

Early in the campaign Wallace went on a tour of the south. True to his
party's principles, he announced in advance that he would neither
address segregated audiences nor stay in segregated hotels. This was
virtually an unprecedented measure to be taken at the time by a major
politician. Wallace paid for it dearly. In a generally hostile study of
Henry Wallace, the authors begrudgingly pay their respects to the
courage and militancy of the candidate:

"The southern tour had begun peacefully enough in Virginia, despite the
existence in that state of a law banning racially mixed public
assemblies. In Norfolk, Suffolk, and Richmond, Wallace spoke to
unsegregated and largely receptive audiences. But when the party went on
into supposedly more liberal North Carolina, where there was no law
against unsegregated meetings, the violence started. A near riot
preceded his first address, and a supporter, James D. Harris of
Charlotte, was stabbed twice in the arm and six times in the back. The
next day there was no bloodshed, but Wallace was subjected to a barrage
of eggs and fruit, and the crowd of about five hundred got so completely
out of control that he had to abandon his speech. At Hickory, North
Carolina, the barrage of eggs and tomatoes and the shouting were so
furious that Wallace was prevented from speaking, but he tried to
deliver a parting thrust over the public address system: 'As Jesus
Christ told his disciples, when you enter a town that will not hear you
willingly, then shake the dust of that town from your feet and go
elsewhere.' If they closed their minds against his message, he would,
like Jesus Christ, abandon them to their iniquity." (Henry A. Wallace:
His Search for a New World Order, Graham White and John Maze)

full: http://www.columbia.edu/~lnp3/mydocs/american_left/Nader2000.htm

This was a campaign worth supporting in my view.

TONY ABDO: In fact, a Green Party vote is about as anticapitalist as a
vote for Kucinich is, and most Green Party supporters were pushing both
Kucinich and GP at both and the same time. And many did the same in 2000
about Gore and Nader. Socialists should 'take a clear class stand', and
not go out and cheerlead the construction of the GP. It's doubtful that
a Malcolm X or a Eugene Debs would have done so, or be on the GP ticket
if alive today. One was too nationalist, and the other too antiwar.

REPLY: For me the criterion is not "anti-capitalism" but running
independently of the Democratic and Republican Parties. I should mention
that the SWP also backed Labor Party initiatives even when the word
capitalism was never mentioned. It also backed the Raza Unida Party,
which was organized around simple demands of Chicano control of the
Chicano community and never said a word about capitalism. When Louis
Stokes, a life-long Democrat, ran as an independent in Cleveland, the
SWP supported him because his campaign could strengthen independent
black political action. In none of these cases was opposition to
capitalism a litmus test. I think that Tony's understanding of electoral
politics has much more to do with the Spartacist League than anything I
ever encountered in the SWP, with all its sectarian faults.

--

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