Re: [Marxism] Greens to be on Ohio State Ballot

[Marvin Gandall <marvgandall@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Yoshie:
> Marvin, you really would have to come down here sometime, even just to
> say hello to me.  :->

I'll look forward to that.  Walker (yes, her first name) and I are sometimes
around your way. Everyone thinks she's terrific, and she is; if you'll like
me, you'll love her. :) If you're ever up around these parts, we'll have to
get together with Richard Fidler. You made the two of us famous last winter,
remember?
======================================
Yoshie:
> One thing about the United States: entryism (entering into an existing
> institution, boring from within, and trying to steer it to the >left) in
> electoral politics makes no sense, for there is no party structure in which
> one can enter.

But I know people who have been active in or around the DP, including one,
Julio Huato, who we both know and who is well respected on this and other
lists. He's found collaboration with DP activists in his community useful
and satisfying. And what about the activities of the various caucuses like
PDA and the blogs? What about the many tens of thousands of trade union,
black, Latino and other DP supporters who mobilize for the party every two
years? Were Tasini, Bonifaz, Winograd, Lamont, and other antiwar Democrats
appointed by the DLC or chosen by activists opposed to the party leadership
at open meetings? I have a Chicago friend who is still smarting from the
Beltway Democrats parachuting Duckworth into his district to run instead of
Cegelis, but he met plenty of good, serious people during her campaign. I
looked on the Cegelis for Congress website out of curiousity, and found
this: http://www.cegelisforcongress.com/getinvolved. I imagine this is
fairly typical of the opportunities for people to get involved in the
political life of the Democratic party across the country if they choose to
do so.

So it doesn't seem to me to be an "organizational" problem, as you suggest -
ie. that the Democratic party is a just phantom which exists only in the
imagination (if only, right?). It is a "political" problem - ie. a part of
the US left is just so thoroughly repelled by the DP leadership and its
politics that it won't go near the party. This is especially the case
because, like the European social democratic parties (which it resembles),
the DP is a pro-imperialist party like the Republicans, and the US left is
mainly concentrated in solidarity work. This focus tends to obscure for them
the differences between the two parties on the domestic social and economic
issues which separate the mostly urban liberal base of the DP from the
mainly suburban/rural conservative base of the Republicans. For the mass of
the population, these differences, though, are more immediate and real and
that, rather than an interest in foreign policy, is fundamentally what draws
them into electoral politics. Which is not to say that they don't become
interested in foreign policy when the body bags come home, when atrocities
committed in their name become apparent and offend their moral
sensibilities, and when their military and national pride are wounded.

I'm not an "entryist" anymore, BTW, in the sense you mean, as I was when I
was in the NDP both during and after my involvement in the Trotskyist
movement. I thought I made that clear in previous posts. I don't think it
much matters whether you are politically active inside or outside the party
now and, in the event of a deep social crisis, the left would regroup itself
so that the current differences on this question would seem irrelevant in
retrospect. But I do sympathize with those who say it would strengthen
rather than weaken the US left if there were more tolerance and contact and
collaboration between its components, and think that the politics of
"sharply drawing the line" - while it may have served the Bolsheviks in
separating the the revolutionary masses from the Mensheviks in 1917 - mostly
leads to sectarianism in a very different context.
=================================
Yoshie:
> Entryism probably doesn't make sense in labor unions either.  If your focus
> is labor, you probably want to team up with like-minded >comrades and work
> in fields -- there are many -- currently neglected or ill served by
> organized labor.

Well, we've previously debated your notion that you can build militant
unions largely outside of the existing trade union structures on the LBO
list, and that's a whole other discussion, to which we can refer anyone who
is interested.
================================
Yoshie:
> If anyone wanted to practice entryism at all, I'd recommend doing so by
> entering a mainline Protestant denomination and doing >congregation-based
> organizing or converting to Islam and doing mosque-based organizing.
> Mainline Protestant denominations like >Episcopalians and Presbyterians
> really practice democracy within their groups, and they are not without
> financial and other >resources, as well as international connections, so
> it's worth joining them if you want.

This reminds me of Tariq Ali's novel Redemption, his very funny but friendly
satire of the Trotskyist movement, and its frustrated penchant for chasing
after different "sectors in motion"- what was derided as "greener pastures"
theory. But the religious institutions have contributed their fair share of
activists to social movements - both progressive and reactionary - so your
idea is is a reasonable one for those whose political outlook is informed by
their religious beliefs. I don't know if I would call that an "entry",
though, which implies there would be something alien and illegitimate about
their participation in these organizations. An "entry" is when you send
people into a union or political party or other organization in which, for
social and political reasons, they feel alien and it quickly shows in
political behaviour which isolates them.






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