Re: [Marxism] On the Democratic Party question

["Joaquin Bustelo" <jbustelo@xxxxxxxxx>]

Louis: When did Marx or Lenin vote for bourgeois parties?

Perhaps "vote" isn't the right verb in Marx's case -- although I'm sure he
would have if he could have. He not only spoke favorably about, but hailed
the election of the bourgeois Republican candidate in the 1864 U.S.
elections. 

Lenin formed blocs with bourgeois parties in the tsarist elections. I
believe Marx, Engels and their friends ran in common slates in 1848 with the
left wing of the bourgeois democrats, but Marx came to the conclusion this
was a tactical error.

*  *  *

Louis responds to my criticizing the ideas that voting for Cynthia McKinney
in Georgia in recent elections is crossing class lines with the statement
that "Because without the Cynthia McKinney's, the Democratic Party would
cease to play the role that it does."

This overlooks the fact that the Democratic Party --the real one-- was
rather desperate to drive McKinney out of office, whereas Louis views her
role as some sort of de-facto conspiracy aimed at "keeping the Nation
Magazine, moveon.org, the DSA, the CPUSA, and the rest of the soft left in
on the 3-card monty game." 

When Louis and I were growing up, there were exactly zero Blacks in
political office in the South. Today there are thousands. This is the result
of the fight of Black people for the right to political representation. We
can decry all we want that it took the form of Blacks running in and through
the Democratic Party, but that is the REALITY.

Blacks and other oppressed nationalities need to break with the Democratic
Party. Agreed. Cynthia McKinney agrees also. Genuinely so. One of the times
she came to speak at one of our Latino community meetings a couple of years
ago she gave such an impassioned denunciation of the Democrats that a
reporter for one of the Spanish-language community papers, who didn't know
too much about U.S. politics, identified her as a Republican member of
Congress. 

*  *  *

For a long time the SWP --and many ex-SWP'ers-- have been conflating their
position of religious opposition to ever voting for anyone who runs on a
Democrat or Republican ballot line with Malcolm X's often-expressed position
that he wouldn't organize Black folks to be Democrats or Republicans because
both those parties were enemies of the Black community. But that is not ALL
Malcolm X said about electoral politics, and he EXPLICITLY put forward the
idea of voting for candidates on either party's ballot line, under certain
conditions:

"We won't organize any black man to be a Democrat or a Republican because
both of them have sold us out. Both of them have sold us out; both parties
have sold us out. Both parties are racist, and the Democratic Party is more
racist than the Republican Party. I can prove it. All you've got to do is
name everybody who's running the government in Washington, D.C., right now.
He's a Democrat and he's from either Georgia, Alabama, Texas, Mississippi,
Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, from one of those cracker states.
And they've got more power than any white man in the North has. In fact, the
President is from a cracker state. What's he talking about? Texas is a
cracker state, in fact, they'll hang you quicker in Texas than they will in
Mississippi. Don't you ever think that just because a cracker becomes
president he ceases being a cracker. He was a cracker before he became
president and he's a cracker while he's president. I'm going to tell it like
it is. I hope you can take it like it is. WE PROPOSE TO SUPPORT AND ORGANIZE
POLITICAL CLUBS, TO RUN INDEPENDENT CANDIDATES FOR OFFICE, AND TO SUPPORT
ANY AFRO-AMERICAN ALREADY IN OFFICE WHO ANSWERS TO AND IS RESPONSIBLE TO THE
AFRO-AMERICAN COMMUNITY.

"We don't support any black man who is controlled by the white power
structure." (EMPHASIS added)

Got that? "Already in office."

*  *  *

Louis really has nothing to say about the situation in Georgia in relation
to Latinos and the state legislature. 

So he answers my concrete discussion of how the issue of the democratic
right of Latinos to political representation presented in the 2006 elections
in typically sectarian, DeLeonist fashion: "Why bother with socialism if the
goal is to elect good Democrats?"

This counterposition of "socialism" to the democratic right of nationally
oppressed peoples to political representation is the sort of mistake that
results from turning concrete tactical questions into abstract questions of
principle about "class lines." The thought that for a materialist, the
absence of a class movement, on the one hand, and the existence of a
national movement, on the other, SHOULD influence what you do politically
and WHICH lines you draw WHEN is one that does not appear to have crossed
Louis's mind.

*  *  *

On Lenin's "critical support," and my noting that none of the EX-SWP people
proposed applying this sort of tactic towards the Democrats, Louis says,
"Your recommendation that socialists work in progressive Democratic Party
campaigns sounds more like the sort of thing I've heard from Medea Benjamin
or Stan Goff. This is --excuse me-- a cheap amalgam. Find where either Stan
Goff or I urged "socialists [to] work in progressive Democratic Party
campaigns" in GENERAL, as opposed to the political approach of Medea
Benjamin. Moreover, Stan's call for a Democrat vote in last November's
election was CLEARLY an application of "critical support" in the style that
Lenin advocated. For a variety of reasons which I explained on this list and
Stan's blogs at the time, I did not think that Stan's tactical stance could
work very well in Georgia.

In response to my discussing Stan's proposal, Louis says, "Of course. Stan
Goff also announced that he was no longer a Marxist as well. For myself, I
will stick with the stodgy doctrines of the 19th century that brilliant
thinkers keep telling us are outmoded."

This is PRECISELY the problem. Sticking to Marxism as a "DOCTRINE." This is,
to put it bluntly, a REPUDIATION of Marxism. 

Rather than prattle on about how he sticks to the "stodgy doctrines" of Marx
and Engels, Louis would do better to actually STUDY Marx and Engels and
their METHOD. Might I recommend he begin with Engels's excellent articles,
The Communists and Karl Heinzen, from which the following is drawn:

*  *  *

Herr Heinzen

"discerns the core of the communist doctrine simply in ... the abolition of
private property (including that earned through labour) and in the principle
of the communal utilisation of the earth's riches which follows inescapably
from that abolition."

Herr Heinzen imagines communism is a certain *doctrine* which proceeds from
a definite theoretical principle as its core and draws further conclusions
from that. Herr Heinzen is very much mistaken. Communism is not a doctrine
but a *movement*; it proceeds not from principles but from *facts*.
(*emphasis* in original.)

*  *  *

It is no accident that the piece where Louis imagines "Stan Goff ...
announced that he was no longer a Marxist" is called PRECISELY "doctrine"
and is NOT a rejection of "Marxism" but rather a "definitive rejection of
Marxism in its current organizational forms, be they called Marxist-Leninist
or Trotskyist or Maoist."

Goff is totally explicit in explaining just what he IS rejecting and what he
is NOT rejecting:

"The Marxist method (as opposed to doctrine) of interpreting these issues
led me to address that latter question with deeper ones still? What do we
mean when we say 'organized'? Who do we mean when we say 'masses'?

"In arriving at tentative answers to these questions, I have - almost with a
sense of grief - concluded that neither Marxist-Leninist nor 'Trotskyist'
nor Maoist, nor Guevarist, etc etc etc, organizations are suitable to the
task, no matter the quality of the individuals who populate them. The
history of these organizations has been, for more than six decades minimum,
a string of failures, punctuated by periodic successes only in mass work
that was self-organizing outside Marxism to some extent anyway."

*  *  *

The same sorts of issues are posed in this discussion. I tried to start a
discussion about the left, comrades diverted it to a discussion of the
Democratic Party. I then came back and joined in on this question, exposing
the doctrinaire and sectarian spirit of the SWP tradition and the
unwillingness of most people in this tradition to DEAL with actual FACTS of
how certain social movements --the ones that really exist-- have found
expression in the electoral arena; any attempt to engage on those facts is
rebutted by Louis as running counter to what HE explicitly calls "doctrine."


To which I will add only this. No analysis or political approach based on
doctrine can be a Marxist one; because its starting point is pre-conceived
ideas, rather than material reality. 

Joaquin



-----Original Message-----
From: marxism-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:marxism-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Louis Proyect
Sent: Saturday, September 01, 2007 10:39 PM
To: Activists and scholars in Marxist tradition
Subject: Re: [Marxism] On the Democratic Party question

Joaquin Bustelo wrote:
> I think this position is wrong. How and whether you vote in bourgeois 
> elections --bourgeois electoral farces-- is strictly and solely a 
> tactical question. Marx voted for bourgeois parties, Lenin voted for 
> bourgeois parties and Fidel was the candidate of a bourgeois party for 
> political office.

When did Marx or Lenin vote for bourgeois parties? With respect to Castro
running as an Ortodoxo candidate, I am not sure whether this is that
meaningful. If he continued running as an Ortodoxo candidate in the way that
Harold Stassen used to run in election campaigns in the USA, nobody would
have ever taken notice. We study his early history as a guide to
understanding the limits of bourgeois politics and the need to find another
route.

> The SWP especially cooked up this cockamamie "theory" about what was 
> really a "workers" party and what wasn't by which you could determine 
> what was "permissible" or not, from a "class" point of view. So for 
> example, if you wanted to vote for some disgusting Stalinist hack or 
> social-democrat traitor to the workers movement, that was OK, but 
> calling for a vote for Fidel in the 1952 Cuban elections, or for 
> comrade sister Cynthia McKinney in the last several elections to the 
> House of Representatives in Georgia's 4th Congressional District 
> --which has been my district for almost 20 years--, THAT would be
"crossing class lines." Go figure!

Because without the Cynthia McKinney's, the Democratic Party would cease to
play the role that it does. You need some concessions to labor, to Blacks
and Latinos, and to women in order to keep the contraption together. They
are critical to keeping the Nation Magazine, moveon.org, the DSA, the CPUSA,
and the rest of the soft left in on the 3-card monty game. They are
desperately hoping that the face-down card will turn up a Democrat who will
do the right thing. When the SWP urged a vote for Gus Hall or whoever, the
idea was to make inroads on its opponent. I doubt that it ever considered
the CPUSA as a vehicle for change in the way that Atrios.com or the UAW
views the DP.

> But things are not that simple. The reality is --and this is 
> especially BLINDINGLY obvious in the South-- that Black people, the 
> Black community, has channeled its fight for the democratic right to 
> political representation in and through the Democratic Party. That is just
a fact.

Joaquin should go back and reread his old posts to Marxmail, where he argues
that the overwhelming tendency of working and poor people in the US is to
ignore elections altogether.

> I do not believe it can be justly said that Black people made a 
> mistaken choice in doing this, because historical development and 
> social conditions left them few other good choices. It isn't good, 
> fair or just that this is the way things turned out, but it IS the way
they turned out.

In fact Blacks got screwed by Democrats and Republicans alike. Here's what
one well-known Black once said in an interview to a magazine that I used to
sell at antiwar demonstrations:

Young Socialist: What is your opinion of the Democratic Party?

Malcolm X: The Democratic Party is responsible for the racism that exists in
this country, along with the Republican Party. The leading racists in this
country are Democrats. Goldwater isn't the leading racist-he's a racist but
not the leading racist. The racists who have influence in Washington, D.C.,
are Democrats. If you check, whenever any kind of legislation is suggested
to mitigate the injustices that Negroes suffer in this country, you will
find that the people who line up against it are members of Lyndon B.
Johnson's party. The Dixiecrats are Democrats. The Dixiecrats are only a
subdivision of the Democratic Party, and the same man over the Democrats is
over the Dixiecrats....

full: http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/45a/070.html

> This last election (2006) Pedro faced a serious fight in the primary. 
> If there had been a socialist organization here substantial enough to 
> have had to concern itself with politics at this level, I think it 
> would have been duty-bound to support Pedro WITHIN the Democratic 
> Party primary, simply and solely on the basis of the democratic right 
> of the (my guess) one and a half million Latinos in this state to
political representation.

Why bother with socialism if the goal is to elect good Democrats? I think
that Joaquin's fulmination against socialism for the past 6 months or so
sort of answers that question.

> On that more generalized sort of level, presidential or overall 
> senate/house general elections, what is striking about the discussion 
> on this list is that no one as far as I can tell advocates the use of 
> Lenin's tactic of "critical support." If you read Lenin's pamphlet on 
> ultraleft and similar writings, you will see that Lenin considered 
> parties like the British Labour Party, etc., to be essentially 
> bourgeois parties masquerading as workers parties. And the tactic is 
> simply pretend "support" as a way of getting a hearing for unmasking 
> the true bourgeois nature of these parties, as a way of OPPOSING and
COMBATING them.

Of course Lenin viewed the Labour Party as a bourgeois party, but he was
dealing with the problem that millions of workers viewed it as a vehicle for
socialism. He argued that it was a sectarian mistake to oppose Labour as
long as workers had such illusions. Does anybody think that the Democrats
are a vehicle for the socialist transformation in the US besides Rush
Limbaugh and David Horowitz?

> And for this reason, Lenin's CRITICAL "support" is JUST as applicable 
> to individuals within a party or to wings of a party, because what 
> drives the tactic is the clash between the *illusions* that working 
> and oppressed people have in some individuals or political formations 
> and the bourgeois/oppressor interests that those individuals or 
> political formations really serve.

Except that Lenin wanted to expose the failure of Labour to follow through
on its campaign promises. Your recommendation that socialists work in
progressive Democratic Party campaigns sounds more like the sort of thing
I've heard from Medea Benjamin or Stan Goff. It is just their hope that it
will rid us of the evil Republicans. No thank you.

> IMHO, there has never been a finer and more supple application of this 
> tactical idea than in the brilliant tactics followed by Fidel and his 
> team in 1959, in insisting that all the heroes of petty-bourgeois 
> democracy take the "power" which allowed them all to be exposed as 
> essentially anti-national and counter-revolutionary in the space of a few
months.

What in the world does this have to do with socialists passing out campaign
literature for some Democrat? Castro had smashed the old state and was
trying to move Cuba in a more revolutionary direction. In the US today, we
are not ready to take power. Nor will we be in 20 years at least. Fidel
Castro said 400 years, but that seems a tad pessimistic to me. I think the
planet will be left to the rats and the pigeons and the cockroaches by then.

> There is no law that says you can't apply a tactical of critical "support"
> in fighting the influence over the masses of Democrat bourgeois 
> politicians ("Support," as Lenin said, like a rope supports a hanging 
> man). It is not "unprincipled." It's precisely what Stan Goff, for 
> example, advocated prior to the November 2006 elections for Congress, 
> although for a number of specific reasons I did not think the tactic 
> had as wide an applicability as he did.

Of course. Stan Goff also announced that he was no longer a Marxist as well.
For myself, I will stick with the stodgy doctrines of the 19th century that
brilliant thinkers keep telling us are outmoded.

> Yet it is a variant completely absent from the discussions on this 
> list, even though Lenin's MOTIVATIONS for applying critical support as 
> a tactic certainly are relevant.

You know something, Joaquin, for somebody who spends so much time lacerating
socialists on a Marxism list, you have a lot of gumption invoking Lenin's
good name.



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