RE: [Marxism] Independence is Not Nothing

["David McDonald" <dbmcdonald@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Yoshie:

Leftists like us are disorganized, and a majority of the American
people do not support us.

David:

I think most of the left is over-organized because it belongs to stupidly
small organizations that wait for the masses to awaken and rise up, defined
as coming to agreement with the party platform. I have worked extensively in
the antiwar movement in Seattle since July 2002 and I can tell you for a
fact that a united demonstration against the war has not occurred since
before the war began. ANSWER/TONC are the most extreme examples of the
subordination of the need for a mass movement to party cant, but they are
far from alone. ANSWER/TONC is so used to going it alone in order to have
their political way that they do not even call a meeting before announcing
whatever demo with whatever politics.

The Lamont victory tells us something: the ranks of DP voters are truly
pissed and have stopped listening to some of the leaders. Well, what do we
do about that?

There are several Green campaigns of interest, principally (AFAIK)
California and Washington State, against Feinstein and Cantwell. Neither, in
my opinion, has overcome the sectarian habits of the Green Party, although I
am much, much more familiar with the Washington State campaign and will
confine my remarks to it.

What do I mean? If the Greens go up against the DP/RP as Greens, and accept
the Democrat-Republican-Green "this is a vote for a party" approach, they
will lose and lose massively. If, on the other hand, they were able to shed
the sect habit they might get somewhere. What does shed sectarianism mean?
It means stop the stupid Green Party cant. Forget the 10 key values. Forget
the usual slogans. Run a strictly non-party or multi-party campaign with one
point: Stop the War. Un-brand the campaign. Approach other parties to find
out what kind of joint platform might be possible. Be prepared to
comproimise on EVERYTHING but the war. This idea runs so counter to the
thinking of all small parties that they can only look cross-eyed when this
suggestion is raised. Elections, for them, are strictly branding exercises.
They want to put their brand in front of the public and get the public to
associate them with certain ideas. Generally, these are hobbyhorses,
commonplaces and vacuities, as I submit, are the TKV, as the Greens call
them.

But what is the entrance price to real politics? People who do not agree
with you on all matters and are consequently not members of your party, but
who are interested in one particular thing, like stopping an imperialist
war, might just possibly become part of the campaign if they are assured
that that is all they are signing on to by supporting you. The Dixon
campaign would be far, far ahead of where it is now if it had never had the
slightest thing to do with the Greens, because the Greens are small, white,
and woodenheaded and can see no further than getting ballot status, which
they pissed away by backing Cobb in 2004, for the next election. In other
words, they are taking a totally routine approach. I don't care how busy
they are. Camejo's approach, to offer the Green Party as the antiwar
movement's electoral expression, is an offer that many have and many more
will be perfectly able to refuse. To be the antiwar party means that you
have to lead the antiwar movement, which means having more of an idea about
what ought to be done than "elect me".

What might work is a tactic to turn the election into a referendum on the
war. That's what Lamont did. But to do that, you have to ruthlessly
subordinate every instinct to brand the campaign as a Green thing. Why?
Because nobody gives a rat's ass about the Green Party, or your party,
whatever it is, as Yoshie notes. The Greens act as if somehow millions of
Americans will awaken one morning, Gregor Samsa-like, and discover their
skin is Green. It won't happen that way, never has. The Bolsheviks came to
power because and only because Lenin knew that most of the party's program,
a document of nearly infinite length, had to be ruthlessly suppressed in
favor of the slogans Peace, Bread, and Land, the latter of which had never
been a part of the RSDLP's program. You can have a referendum on the war, or
a nice little Green campaign, but not both.

Our problem is the problem of unity. No progress of significant measure will
occur until we begin to act as if unity mattered and find the political
wherewithal to pursue it in action.



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