[Marxism] Nader's campaign and the call for a pure socialist vote

[Dbachmozart@xxxxxxx]

Message: 25
Date: Sun, 6 Jul 2008 23:19:06 -0400

"chegitz guevara" _absynthe@xxxxxxxxxx (mailto:absynthe@xxxxxxxxx)  writes -
 
"Our parties  run candidates, not because we think we could win the
Presidency (or in my  case, Congress), but because when you are running
for office, people want  your opinion on things. I will get more
attention as Marc Luzietti for  Congress than I do as Marc Luzietti,
average joe socialist."
 
"...The point is getting attention, and our candidates are getting *some*  
attention."
 
reply -
 
While I'm sure that you are an articulate comrade, the reality is that both  
you and your miniscule and irrelevant organization, as well as all the other  
left sects will get NO attention.
 
I agree completely with Mark Lause - this is much bigger than your little  
grouplet. The point is NOT "getting attention" - "listen to me, I have all  the 
answers!" - but to do whatever we as Marxists can to push forward the  leftist 
motion of millions of people as a result of the war, the fears of  impending 
economic and environmental disaster, government-approved torture, the  
evisceration of the Bill of Rights, surrender to the corporations - and the  
complicity of the Democrats in all of this. Trotsky analogized it as the small  
gear 
that, in and of itself has no power, but in the right circumstances can  propel 
a larger gear into motion. That larger gear today is NOT some far left  sect 
that speaks to no one but its own membership, nor is it some Labor Party  that 
doesn't exist. In the real world of 2008 US politics, that larger gear is  
the Nader campaign.
 
 

If there was a significant Labor, Green  or "progressive", "populist" party 
that ran against the capitalist parties  and someone like Nader was their 
candidate, most socialists would have no  trouble supporting him. It's not his 
fault that we don't have such a party. He's  not a revolutionary Marxist, but 
he 
has stood up and opposed an imperialist war  before it even started and 
condemned BOTH capitalist parties for their  support of it. That is a big step 
forward in the context of today's  political scene.
 
I am looking for the best weapon with which to destroy the Democratic  party. 
I've always felt that only when they are driven off the  political stage (as 
the Whigs were by the Republicans in the 1850s) can the  left begin to stand 
on its own two feet and speak with its own voice. The  Democrats are the single 
biggest obstacle in the path of a mass left. Will  the far left campaigns do 
anything to remove that obstacle?  If  so, I'd support them, but there is no 
movement of people or even  political activists towards any of them. 
 
Nader's candidacies have been seen, quite correctly by the  Democrats as an 
existential threat to them, which is why they have fought  him with so much 
venom and vitriol, why they slandered him after 2000 for  "causing Gore's 
defeat", why they cut their financial support to his consumer  organizations 
and why 
they threw him off the ballot in several of the  biggest states in '04. A 
party/movement to the left of the Democrats that  can chip away its left wing 
can 
destroy them by making it impossible to win  enough elections to hold power on 
a national stage. The Democrats' usefulness  for the ruling class would no 
longer exist, and the party's different blocs and  factions would thus be 
forced 
to "look for a new home". Black America,  environmental activists, labor, 
women, gay rights supporters, civil  libertarians, opponents of the 
military-industrial and prison-industrial  complexes - all would gravitate to 
such a new 
party, as anti  slavery activists flocked to the new Republican Party of the 
1850s. That  Republican Party was not very pure - it didn't call for abolishing 
 
slavery throughout the US. It merely opposed the extension of slavery  into 
the new territory stolen from Mexico. There must have been purist  
Abolitionists 
who condemned them, but Marx and Engels understood that  in the 
political-social context of that time, a party standing up to  the slave-owning 
class was a 
progressive - revolutionary step forward, and they  supported it 
wholeheartedly. 

 
Nader is polling around 6% nationwide - that translates to millions of  
people actually willing to break from lesser evil politics. This represents  
something real and positive, as opposed to the purely sectarian campaigns of 
the  
far left who won't create the barest ripple on the US political scene. Nader's  
campaign doesn't call for socialism, it doesn't represent taking ten steps  
forward. It represents one major step forward.  Didn't Marx say something about 
preferring a real movement of masses of  people over a dozen "correct" 
programs? Basing ourselves upon the method of the  Transitional Program and not 
some 
idealist notion of political purity, I feel  that we are obliged to do 
whatever we can to support this positive step  - and then be in a position to 
encourage more.
 
 
 
 






âWe have it in our power to begin the world  over againâ âThomas Paine



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