Re: Re: Memory & History: Herman Melville's _Benito Cereno_ (was Re:Yugoslavia to fSU and Chile)

["Charles Brown" <CharlesB@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>>> dhenwood@xxxxxxxxx 10/11/00 12:58PM >>>
Charles Brown wrote:

>CPUSA had a theory of American exceptionalism in the 1930's:
>Americanism is 20th Century Socialism ( or maybe the other way
>around).

Speaking of the CPUSA, does anyone besides me read the People's
Weekly World? For the last month or two, the paper's been little more
than a propaganda sheet for the Democrats - though not phrased that
bluntly, since it's always "unite and defeat the right!" or "labor's
voice strong at Dem convention." Sure, they have the occasional
column denouncing the evils of capitalism, but it's surrounded with
endorsements for a ruling class party. What a weird political
formation.

((((((((((((((

CB: Yes, I read it. I think I have posted articles from it.

By the way, Engels and Marx joined or supported a Democratic Party ( I think that was the exact name; it was a bourgeois liberal party) at one point. The balancing of opportunism vs sectarianism is one of the most difficult problems of the left. However,  suppporting a bourgeois party in certain concrete circumstances has plenty of precedent in the Marxist tradition. Soviet Union and U.S. ( with Democratic President) were military allies in WWII. German Communists are criticized by many today for not uniting with Social Dems ( not unlike Democrats in many ways).

Given that history and more, it is more like the CP just disagrees with your analysis than that what they are doing is weird , in the sense that many Communists and Marxists and Marx himself made similar decisions of support for bourgeois parties and governments in certain concrete circumstances.

See Lenin's _Leftwing Communism: An Infantile Disorder_, for  a discussion of the opportunism/sectarianism contradictions and principles ( It even has a Freudian allusion in the title).