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

[Carrol Cox <cbcox@xxxxxxxxx>]

Louis Proyect wrote:
>
> I am not sure that Marvin is familiar with the theoretical distinctions
> between a social democratic party that has a social base in the trade
> unions and a bourgeois party like the Democrats, etc. but they are real and
> important even if they aren't so for him.

I'm also not sure whether Marvin makes or recognizes a distinction
between working DP voters/followers on the one hand and working with the
DP party machinery (such as it is) on the other hand. For 35 years I
have worked with DP voters, and almost no one else. Just once (the
Jackson campaign of '88) I worked with local DP 'regulars.' There
probably could come into existence conditions in which I would repeat
the latter exercise, but if so those conditions are beyond my powers of
fancy to imagine. The best that can happen from engaging with the DP
leadership at the local level is that one wastes one time. There is no
best or even lesser evil from working with DP leadership at any higher
level.

Marvin thought I was being flippant or insolent when, in response to one
of his posts on LBO, I posted the following:

Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>
> On 6/27/06, Marvin Gandall <marvgandall@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > I think liberals and leftists do try to replace conservative Democrats with
> > liberal ones in the primaries.
>
> Here and there, yes (Jonathan Tasini comes to mind).  But not at all
> systematically, in a way that makes a difference.

Hope springs eternal in the human breast:
Man never Is, but always To be Blest.
The soul, uneasy and confin'd from home,
Rests and expatiates in a life to come....
        (EonM, I, 95-98)

Or, as Joe Hill put it, for DP supporters "There'll be pie in the sky
when you die."

-----------

He answered that I ought to give an argument rather than a one liner and
poetry. But the poetry is probably the best critique of the position
which Marvin is tailing, that of the CP since 1936. For 70 years
leftists have followed Marvin's advice. For 70 years hope has sprung
again and again in their hearts that something good can come from their
working with or for the DP. And for 70 years the nation has moved
further and further to the right (as has the "left" of the DP). Even
during the '60s that rightward movement of the DP continued, though
disguised by the extent to which the party had to give in to the
_non-electoral_ movements flowing from the _non-electoral_ civil-rights
and black power struggles.

Pope describes Marvin's politics to a T.

I'm protecting my left elbow these days (having had the third shot of
cortisone in it for tennis elbow; if that doesn't work it's surgery).
Hence I won't try to develop this further.

Carrol

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