RE: [Marxism] Reply to Carl Davidson

["David McDonald" <dbmcdonald@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Carl Davidson:

I also read Camejo's 'Avocado Statement.' It basically calls for aiming
the main blow at the Democratic Party these days, since the Dems are the
main 'social prop' of the Republicans, and if that means the GOP and the
right get stronger, so be it. We'll deal with them later, after we clean up
the debris. I think that piece of it is a bit ultraleft, don't you?

Perhaps you think it's just fine. But my diagreement with Camejo is over
tactics, not objectives. I don't think the Dems can be reformed. I want a
breakup of the Dems too, and replaced with a people's party. But I want to
find a way to do it that strengthens the progressive forces and not the far
right. But that's another discussion...

David McDonald:

Carl Davidson may believe his disagreement with Camejo is tactical rather
than strategic, but I don't think so. There is no way to build a third party
that will not hurt the Democrats. That is why the Greens folded in 2004,
because they could not take the heat of hurting the DP in "the most
important election of our lifetime" (as my congressperson ultraliberal
progressive Jim McDermott called it). The point is not to make the
Republicans stronger at the expense of the Democrats, but to make both those
parties weaker by posing an alternative.

My goal is to drive a stake through the heart of the Democratic Party, cut
off its head, fill it with garlic and bury it in unhallowed ground at the
crossroads at midnight in a thunderstorm. Until one is prepared to accept
the perspective that damage to the DP is a good thing, not a bad thing, one
will always be susceptible to blandishments of hurting progressive forces
within the Democratic Party. Regular people will sniff out in a heartbeat
that such an effort to build a new party while holding off on hurting the
lesser of the two evil parties is doomed. People already refuse to waste
their time voting for anyone to the tune of almost 50% of the electorate
because, obviously, they despise both these parties. Unless, of course, you
think that non-voters are just stupid.

Waiting for some progressive wing of the DP to initiate a split in that
organization is also a total waste of time. Progressive Democratic Party
leaders may come over to the side of a mass party of working people and
their allies -- I certainly hope they will -- but they will never lead it.
Some of them will follow their membership as the leak from the DP turns into
a torrent under the impact of a mass popular party, and that will be good.
But by the time they get around to giving up on the DP it will have already
assumed the aspect of mummification.

To take on the DP is not safe and it will never be safe. I expect the fury
of the DP directed at Nader/Camejo to be the norm for future elections. It
worked for them. It kept the Iraq War completely off the table of public
discourse for an entire election year. There is no other way the DP can
guard its left flank in order to allow itself to operate within political
nanometers of the Republicans.

I am not certain that the DP has it in itself at this late date to make a
sharp turn to its left in order to swallow part of the program of the actual
left, as it did in the 30's. What it did in the 60's-70's was to throw the
1972 election and thereby show everyone what happens when you get boxed into
nominating a communist like George McGovern, and, more importantly, use the
power and wealth of the state it administered to buy off and co-opt a small
layer of the leadership of the Black community, those whom it did not just
assassinate, to put them in charge of doling out the crumbs of the Great
Society. In recent decades both greater evil parties have dropped outright
killing in the majority of cases for wholesale incarceration of Black youth
as the fundamental strategy to deal with the intolerable and growing
disparities of American society. Hence the unanimity of DP-RP attacks on
crime and so forth. It's good for business.



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