Re: [Marxism] The Teixeira thesis

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

Marvin Gandall:
> This is an interesting observation, Louis. If you truly believe that the
> issue which is on the agenda today is a stark choice between ?capitalism
> or socialism? ­ and that working class support for capitalist parties is
> simply an irrelevant distraction ­ do you mind my asking why are you not
> now in a revolutionary organization? Doesn?t one logically follow from
> the other? It certainly did in the political tradition we both come
> from, and nothing has changed my understanding of the connection between
> the two.

I believe that the most urgent task facing the left is regroupment just as 
it was in the 1950s. Back then the process was driven by disillusionment 
with Stalin following the Khruschchev revelations . Today it is driven by 
the collapse of the USSR and a recognition that the "Marxist-Leninist" is a 
mistake. The purpose of this mailing list is to provide a forum for this 
regroupment process and drive it forward. If down the road a revolutionary 
formation based on a new awareness comes into being, I'd probably join it. 
But right now I couldn't find the time to moderate this list and to 
participate in something like Solidarity, which is closer to my ideal than 
any other group despite all the problems I have with the magazine Against 
the Current.

> Instead, you plump for the Green Party which, last time I looked, was
> not committed to social ownership of the means of production, but to
> reforming capitalism. So far as I can tell, it differs from the
> Democrats only insofar as it is not a serious contender for power and
> therefore not subject to the pressures which cause all reformist parties
> to trim their sails and tack towards the centre the closer they get to
> political office. Let me correct that. It also differs from the
> Democrats in another respect: it has no working class base  or support
> in the labour movement.

You have the same confusion as Tony Abdo. If millions of working people 
were gravitating toward independent political action while engaging in 
militant strikes and mass actions, I'd not be pushing for support of the 
Green Party. The art of politics is knowing what to do next.

> I remember asking you some time back, ?Are you quite certain that if the
> Greens should somehow take power in the US within the framework of the
> current system, they will govern very differently than the two
> established parties??, but I never did receive an answer ­ only a very
> defensive diatribe.

The bourgeoisie wouldn't even allow Dean to run for president. They were 
even more determined to stop Matt Gonzalez from becoming Mayor of San 
Francisco, an insignificant post by comparison. I see the Greens as opening 
up the electoral process and helping to raise awareness that there is a 
two-party system. The notion that the big bourgeoisie would ever attempt to 
use this party as a vehicle for its class interests is ridiculous in my 
opinion.

> I can appreciate that you find the discipline of the revolutionary left
> organizations demanding ­ what you describe as ?Zinovievism? ­ and their
> political approaches wanting, but is there no organization out there to
> which you could accommodate and attempt to reform along the lines you
> favour? I know the SWP is a no-no, but you have spoken sympathetically
> in the past of Workers? World, although I expect, if you were to make a
> commitment, you would probably find a more loosely-organized formation
> of the kind we used to call ?centrist? more to your liking.

It is clear that you haven't figured out what I have been pushing for. I 
advocate a Bolshevik type party in the USA and everywhere else for that 
matter. Unfortunately, attempts to build such parties have been marred by 
schematism. Comrades can look at what I have written on the topic in my 
archived articles under organizational problems.

> I raise this only because I would find your contempt for ?reformists?
> such as myself more understandable and, in its own way, more worthy of
> respect, if you came at it as a revolutionary militant acting in
> accordance with his principles rather than as a politically inactive
> supporter of an aspiring liberal-democratic party like the Greens.

I have no idea why you put reformist in scare quotes. You give every 
indication of having succumbed to social democratic politics, even to the 
point of suggesting that Kautsky might have been right in 1917. If the shoe 
fits, wear it.


Louis Proyect
Marxism list: www.marxmail.org 


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