[Marxism] Re Camejo to speak at CCNY

[Ilyenkova@xxxxxxx]

Steve Grabosch writes: 
>And certainly, this document's [Avocado Statement] criticism of the 
Democratic Party 
as a party of big business is a traditional socialist point of view.  But 
these positions are also traditional views of left-liberalism in the US.<

Say What? A traditional view of left-liberalism in the U.S. is criticism of 
the Democratic party as a party of big business? Perhaps you wrote this 
sentence in haste and didn't mean for it to read this way.(??) The reason 
Nader-Camejo is a significant 3rd party effort is exactly because it makes this 
crtitque 
of the Democratisc Party. In my experience, whether in the workplace, the 
community, my union, in the anitwar movement, and even within my own extended 
family of left-liberal Democratic Party activists, it's always been and still 
is 
blasphemy to call the Democratic Party by its correct name. Whatever the 
limitations of the Nader campaign (i.e. a tendency on Nader's part to curry 
favor 
with the Reform Party, libertarians and disaffected Republicans) it has stayed 
strong, and in fact, gotten stronger since Camejo was added, on the class 
nature of the Democratic Party.  The campaign has been open and honest about 
not 
being socialist-- at Harvard during the DNC, Nader responded to a Spart 
question 
on this by stating he's not a socialist because he doesn't think the American 
people are "responsible enough for socialism" (yes, ugh!!).  The campaign's 
attack on the Democratic Party has been relentless, and resonates with the 
perceptions of millions of working class voters. It's quite clear that this 
exposure of the DP, and its role in propping up the Republicans as Camejo 
stresses, 
issues from the left. Given the position that revolutionary marxists find 
themselves in at this juncture in the US, the formal question "are you for 
capitalism or socialism" takes a very distant second place in importance to 
building 
a movement of the broad anti-corporate left that hastens the breakup of the 
two party system and its deadly stranglehold on what passes for the left here. 
I 
haven't yet seen from Marxist groups like the ISO and the CWI who actively 
support Nader-Camejo any illusions about either Nader or the Green Party as 
socialist As I read their press and hear from members they view it as a left 
political vehicle where they're welcome and can have an influence. Can 
activists 
bring principled antiwar, anticorporate, pro-working class, pro-gay, 
tax-the-rich politics into the Democratic Party!  It's simply not allowed or 
tolerated. 
Ilyenkova
_______________________________________________
Marxism mailing list
Marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism