[Marxism] Tilting at windmills: Once Again On "What is to be done in 2008"

[Anthony Boynton <northbogota@xxxxxxxxx>]

Once Again On "What is to be done in 2008"

In the last few days I have posted a few items
proposing that the left should work hard for a third
party antiwar challenge to Democrats and Republicans
in 2008. There was very little response to the idea. 

If the response to my 'trial ballon' is any evidence,
people who read this list are not wildly enthusiastic,
or even very interested in this idea. In other words,
the "subjective factor" to make this idea happen is
nearly absent on this list, and probably is absent in
the United States, as Jaoquin Bustelo's response to my
post argues.

His response was bascially a long essay explaining why
he thinks socialist revolution in the United States
may have to wait for centuries. He was trying to
explain Lüko Willms  terse note labeling my proposal
(although neither mentioned it by name)  "electoral
cretinism."  

Here is my response to Joaquin's very pessimistic
essay.

My personal crystal ball is broken, and Marx's never
worked, neither did Lenin's ? and I am not comparing
myself to them. My point is that Jaoquin's crystal
ball may not be working either. Nobody knows, or can
know when a socialist revolution is going to happen.
In the case of Lenin he was caught completely by
surprise in February, 1917.

My post about what the left should do in the 2008
election had nothing to do with reading chicken
entrails to predict any future social revolutions in
any country.

My aim is to point US leftists who want to change the
world, not just suck their toes, in a direction that
is most likely to defend the working class and poor of
the world, including the young soldiers who are being
sent to the Middle East to be maimed and killed.

This means acting in a way designed to get the united
States military out of the Middle East, especially
Iraq.

What direction of activity can do this? Organizing
demonstrations agains the war is a good one, but its
immediate impact on the war will be close to nil.
Threatening the reelection of a member of Congress, or
the electoral ambitions of a Presidential candidate
(and the ruling class faction behind that candidate)
will have a real impact, now in the real world.

Can the left threaten ruling class politicians with
defeat at the polls? Or is the left too small, too
stupid, too ineffectual, too backward, too tired, too
dismal ?

I can't answer the question for sure. But all of the
objective factors, meaning those not in the control of
the activists of the left, are shouting YES to this
question.

Cindy Sheehan is threatening to run aganist Nancy
Pelosi in San Francisco is she does not move for the
impeachment of Bush.

I suppose Lüko Willms  would call her a cretin, but I
think she is a very smart politician, as well as a
very brave person.

In the last election for Mayor in San Francisco the
Green Party nearly won. The Green's were the second
party of SF, after the Democrats. The Republicans were
third or fourth.

Cindy Sheehan's threat may not materialize, but Pelosi
and the Democrats are very vulnerable to a challenge
from the left on the issue of the war, and they know
it.

How vulnerable? What happened to the Green's in the
last presidential election should show how seriously
the Democrats take the threat from the left ? their
supporters within the Green's stole the nomniation for
president, effectively demobilizeing the one electoral
vehicle the left had in 2004. 

Nobody knows how fast disillusionment with the wars is
growing in the United States, but the signs that it is
growing fast are all there: record suicides int eh
military, record desertion rates, low recruitment
rates, Bush has fallen from being one of the most
popular presidents in history to the single most
unpopular, the Christan right is in disarray ? and the
Democratic presidential aspirants are all begining to
let the cat out of the bag that they will not ever
leave Iraq ? just like Bush and the GOP.

Millions of people in the United States will vote for
a creditable left Presidential candidate, and for
candidates for other offices from dog catcher to
Senate. The left does not have to win a single seat to
have a powerful impact.

IF enough people on the left see the possibility and
have the desire to do it.

Joaquin wrote,

"The left in the United States squanders the BULK or
its potential and resources. Our organized socialist
groups have dozens, hundreds or perhaps --in the case
of the ISO?one thousand members. I believe there
easily could have been a socialist group
in the United States today with five, ten or fifteen
thousand active
members. The people exist, even today. What doesn't
exist is the group that
would make it possible." 

If he is correct about this, and no New Left arises as
one did in the 1960's, then my proposal is ridiculous.


Joaquin thinks that this will definitely not happen.
He continued,

"Nor, I have become gradually convinced over the past
few years, do the OBJECTIVE conditions exist that
would make it possible to
easily or quickly overcome the SUBJECTIVE reasons that
make that unity
impossible."

While he may very well be correct that the existing
left in the United States is practically speaking
worthless, I think that all of the objective
conditions point to the great probablity of the rise
of a new left in the USA. How strong it will be, how
successful it will be, whether or not it will view
itself as Marxist, are much more difficult to talk
about. Certainly it will be weaker, and less oriented
to Marxism if its participants read Joaquin's
firebrand thoughts.

Anthony



       
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