Re: Gary Trudeau, Iraq and Nader

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

Marvin Gandall:
> Though each side  claims to be acting on behalf of socialist ideals they
> still espouse, in practice they nonetheless are campaigning for one or the
> other of the two liberal parties contesting the election against the
> conservative Republicans around the range of issues described above. The
> Greens, it is true, are the more assertive of the two in advancing the
> liberal agenda -- especially concerning Iraq, where Nader has called for the
> phased withdrawal of US troops -- but this only reflects their relative
> distance from power. It's perhaps worth recalling, in this connection, that
> Joshka Fisher was once the German  Peter Camejo, and this is not meant as a
> criticism of either.

This is far less about ideals than it is about challenging the 2-party
system. I don't think there's much to distinguish between Kucinich and
Nader politically. But the crucial difference is that Kucinich effectively
liquidated his politics when he lined up behind Kerry. As the Tom Petty
song goes, Nader is the "I won't back down" candidate. In 1948 Henry
Wallace ran as the Progressive Party candidate with a New Deal platform for
all practical purposes. I would have backed Wallace, but not FDR. I think
Marvin's problem is that he really can't tell the difference between the
Democrats and social democratic parties. When he made an analogy between
the Canadian NDP and the Democrats in the USA, I reminded him that the
proper analogy is with the Liberal Party in Canada, not the NDP which was
born out of the labor movement. The Liberal Party is of course the rotten
bourgeois party that was headed up by Pierre Trudeau, Gary's distant
relative. I can certainly understand why Marvin would blur class lines in
this way, although it would be impolite to explain why.