Re: [Marxism] GP entrails [In defense of Harrington and American Menshevism]

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

Bhaskar wrote:
>Build a campaign to fight for them in the Democratic Party; look at 
>the Jesse Jackson platform in the 1980s, I would say much of that 
>platform is to the LEFT of Nader's platform in 2008.

That's true, but politics is not just about campaign speeches. In 
running as a Democrat, Jackson belied his progressive rhetoric. I 
became convinced that the Greens had a real future in 2000 when Nader 
held a standing room only rally at Madison Square Garden. Here's part one:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbuIAZtXfgo&feature=related

That year he received 2,882,995, or 2.74 percent of the popular vote, 
which was a sign that the Greens had real potential. That and the 
fact that Nader supposedly cost Gore the election led the DP to put 
enormous pressure on the Greens, both through legal actions to keep 
them off the ballot and through influencing the soft left in 
leadership positions. The end result was strangling the infant in its 
cradle. If the Greens did not represent such a threat to the existing 
system, the DP would have happily ignored them just as it ignores the 
SWP, the WWP, the PSL, the SP and every other sect.

One bitter lesson I have learned about politics is that when an 
opportunity is squandered, it is very difficult to regain lost 
ground. In the 1970s and 80s, the radicalized youth went off into 
Maoist and Trotskyist cloud cuckooland and a great potential to build 
a radical political movement was wasted. In 2000, we had another shot 
but that too was wasted, not because of ultraleftism but because of 
opportunism. Ultraleftism, opportunism... Some things have not 
changed since Lenin's day. 


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