Re: Thomas Frank op-ed piece

[Marvin Gandall <marvgandall@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Don't you think it will be necessary for the Greens to win a number of
congressional seats before they can be seen as a potential alternative to
the Democrats by the unions and social movements, and a durable third party
in the country as a whole? After all, electoral politics in a capitalist
democracy,  whether of the presidential or parliamentary kind, ultimately
turns on which parties of the left and right can respectively advance the
competing agendas of the social movements and business lobbies, and the
legislative arena is where this contest centrally unfolds. So you have to
have representatives there who can work with the leaders of the mass
organizations to help them implement their legislative programs so far as
political circumstances permit. This was the route followed by the early
labour and socialist parties in continental Europe and the English-speaking
countries. The Democrats, of course, currently have a monopoly on this kind
of contact in the US. It seems to me Nader's campaigns draw a lot of
national attention, but are ephemeral propaganda exercises which don't sink
lasting political roots. Green mayoralty campaigns can build local party
organizations, but their influence by definition is limited. What kind of
emphasis do the US Greens give to winning seats in state legislatures and
Congress, and what kind of results have they had to date at this level?

Marv Gandall

----- Original Message -----
From: "Carrol Cox" <cbcox@xxxxxxxxx>
To: <PEN-L@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Friday, July 23, 2004 4:35 PM
Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Thomas Frank op-ed piece


> Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
> >
> >  Even if the Green Party were to succeed in
> > electing Green mayors in all cities in the United States, for
> > instance, an impact of such a dramatic change in local politics on US
> > foreign policy won't be even minimalist -- it will be practically
> > zero.
>
> Not necessarily. One can't judge that _If_  as though in a laboratory
> where one element changes while all other elements remain constant. The
> conditions under which the GP could elect mayors in several hundred
> substantial (150k+ population) cities around the u.s. would be
> conditions which could not occur without profound reverberations
> elsewhere from the activities which brought about the electoral
> victories. You and I have both complained about those comments on
> revolution which presuppose that revolutionary action would occur with
> all other conditions (as now experienced) remaining constant. (E.g.
> someone once asked the silly question of how we could ask the working
> class to risk everything for overthrow of capitalism, when of course
> "we" would never ask that but conditions, now unpredictable and
> undescribable -- perhaps of rising expectations,  perhaps of utter
> chaos, perhaps of something we cannot describe now--would do the
> "asking.")
>
> I tend to agree that the local politics route to national power is
> illusional, but in considering it we can't consider it in a vacuum.
>
> The mass assault on u.s. foreign policy which is needed can't
> demonstrate in D.C. every week (this is a caricature but take it as a
> gesture towards a more complex reality), and the energies recruited and
> ultimately aimed towards national impact could well be (partly)
> nourished and enhanced through local political initiatives, including
> perhaps the election of mayors or (perhaps though I doubt it) even
> through contesting for power in local DP organizations.
>
> Carrol
>