Re: [Marxism] What are the Greens, or waiting for the industrial proletarian Godot

[Marvin Gandall <marvgandall@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Mark wrote:

> Some radicals have always thought that we can get to where we all want to
> go
> by calling for it...and by complaining that other radicals aren't also
> calling for it.
==============================
In the end, as is often said, life settles these controversies.

I think it's very conceivable that if a substantial  anticapitalist left
wing emerged in the DP - as the Militant and Benn tendencies did in the
British Labour Party in the 80s - that a lot of US leftists who now shun the
party would be drawn into it. They would be drawn into DP, not because of
any illusion that the party had suddenly become "reformable", but in order
to reach out and influence its radicalizing rank-and-file and to help lead
it out of the party if the DP was headed for a split. Alternatively, if the
Greens suddenly exploded on the national scene, and began siphoning off the
DP base in the liberal and minority communities, then skeptics like myself
would necessarily have to revise our thinking both about the the strategic
importance of the DP and social democratic parties in contemporary politics.

I expect a working class radicalization would be simultaneously expressed
both within and outside of the Democrats, marked by the parallel growth of a
DP left, the Greens, and also of the small revolutionary socialist groups in
accordance with their present weight in the the unions and social movements.
If the radicalization continued to deepen, I think there'd be series of
splits and fusions resulting in a convergence of the broad US left in a
party to the left of the Democrats.

Meantime, the US left is hardly in a position to influence the political
direction of the US working class from inside or outside the Democratic
party, which detracts from the urgency which often accompanies the highly
speculative discussion on both sides of the issue.



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