Re: [Marxism] The criticism of religion[was:RE:Vnzla:reasonstobeoptimistic]

[Haines Brown <brownh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> The DP isn't a waste or harmful just because it's a quicksand.  It
> is on the other side.  And it is that simple.
> 
> Don't tell me about "the ranks," because the Democrats, like the
> Republicans are a "caucus party."  Everything done and decided is
> entirely top-down and the voters have to make the best of what
> they're offered on a take-it-or-leave-it basis.  It has no "members"
> or "ranks," just consumers voting their consumer preferences.
> 
> Nobody on this list is actually "a Democrat" any more than they own
> an automobile manufacturer just because they buy what they're
> selling....
> 
> But people can talk themselves into believing some remarkable
> fucking things.  If 25% of the qualified voters in the U.S. think
> they're Democrats, it means little more than the fact that 40% think
> people get abducted by aliens or 65% believe in angels or that 70%
> have accepted Jesus Christ as their personal savior.

You to bring up what on the surface appears to be a valid point, but
it must be looked at carefully.

Indeed, the Democratic Party (and all other parties) are to a large
extent ultimately subservient to capitalist interests, but:

  a) This overlooks the enormous complexity and diversity in the party
  at the national, state and local levels. It is not really "top down"
  except in electoral campaigns, such as I experienced when I was
  state treasurer for a presidential candidate may years
  ago. Otherwise it would be a gross simplification to suggest that
  the Party is top down.

  b) At my local (city) level, virtually all elected Democrats are
  "progressive", but that makes little difference. I'm on the
  committee to re-elect a Black mayor who happens to be gay, and I
  happen to be a communist as most people know, but no one really
  cares about these things as long as no one makes an issue of
  them. When the mayor was elected some years ago, our local
  prostitute newspaper went to great lengths to prove he was gay, but
  got nowhere because they found that their effort just alienated
  people.

  c) The subservience of the Democratic Party (and many other
  organizations such as the NAACP) means subservience to money, which
  generally means subservience to the power of individual corporations
  rather than to the capitalist system per se. They are not at all
  the same thing. It is a subservience to power, but to a power that
  can be more damaging to the capitalist system than supportive of it.

  d) there are many forces at work in political life that do not
  reduce to capitalist interests. Generally, capitalist interests are
  only implicit, and so need to exposed in explicit terms. We can't
  just presume politics reduces to nothing more than a tool of
  capitalism lest we end up isolated in a mutual admiration society 
  of The Virtuous. For most of the working class most of the time, any
  such subservience of the Democratic Party is not as important as
  real, immediate and tangible issues that must be addressed by
  whatever means are available to us.

  e) One can't become politically engaged without implicitly
  supporting the capitalist system. A militant demonstration over an
  issue in effect lends the capitalist order legitimacy and a reform
  effort serves to perpetuate it. Bombing the White House encourages
  the state to fortify its own powers. We effectively have no
  choice but to engage the capitalist system in as constructive
  a way we can.

"Dropping out" is pathologically anti-social, although "dropping in"
tends to perpetuate and even develop the system. As Sartre put it,
none of us have clean hands. The issue can't be to refuse to support
capitalism and instead lend our time and energy to progressive causes,
for that distinction is chimeral. We have no choice but to to engage
the system in various ways, one of which can of course be to build a
politically independent movement critical of capitalism. However, we
must admit that until the revolution actually comes, such a movement
is as much a part of the capitalist system as the Democratic Party.

Politics is not a form of consumerism, for we are always engaged, even
if it be only passively. That is our condition in life. We may become
actively engaged because we have a sense of social responsibility, or
because we see that it serves our interests to do so, or because, as
in my case at present, you are a friend of a candidate. All you can
really do is to make the best of the capitalist situation in which
find yourself. That means the most you can do is to try to make it
work better. What differentiates the conscious "progressive" is that
he knows that making capitalism "work better" deepens its
contradictions and this is a necessary condition for eventual
revolution.

Third party or independent politics is, of course always valid option,
but we must realize that it does not lift us out of the capitalist
system or separate us from imperialism. You may not expect to win an
election, but you can at least raise consciousness or build a
movement. If that happens, excellent, but it is still within the
capitalist system. However, to take this route when you know very well
that you will achieve none of these outcomes borders on the insane or,
less charitably, is self-indulgent petite-bourgeois adventurism.

In the remark I quoted above the suggestion is made that party
identity is only nominal and amounts to an identification with a
political formation that serves the capitalist system. This may be
true, but it is a gross simplification that arrogantly denigrates
those who have to engage the system because they have real needs or
real moral commitments. It implies there is a viable alternative to
participation in the capitalist system, when in fact there is none at
present. I could say the same thing about my US citizenship.

Of course, there will be no real alternatives unless some of us
adventurously go out to construct them. However, I believe it would be
a mistake to build an ideological organization that might become a
movement that might become a real force in political life. It seems
better to start with our own substantial needs and those of our
neighbors and then build an organization or movement to address them,
which necessarily is within the capitalist system for that's how you
get something done. It is only as that system is no longer capable of
responding to our needs (rather than simply unwilling to respond
because our movement is negligible), that the conditions necessary for
revolution mature, and as they do, class consciousness will quickly
blossom.

A critical consciousness is possible only because the world is
contradictory, not because consciousness is somehow independent of the
world.

What I'm suggesting is that it is wrong to denigrate the bulk of the
working class just because it chooses not to jump into our boat.

-- 
 
       Haines Brown, KB1GRM

         
        

________________________________________________
YOU MUST clip all extraneous text before replying to a message.
Send list submissions to: Marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism