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Yeah, it's absurd to describe something as not a working class formation because it doesn't label itself as such. Equally to think that something's not a working class formation because that it's run by sellouts and/or idiots. I've long severed ties with the coalition of flakes and Democrats in the local party. The last person they supported as a "Green" was also running as a Democrat and I just got an email endorsing him from one of our big name local machine politicians. This doesn't mean that the Greens elsewhere might be genuinely independent, though I think it's politically suicidal for them to retain ties with state and local parties that don't really exist except on paper and function primarily as a stopgap measure to bloc any viable independent alternative from taking form. But, since it's gone on since the last century, I don't have high hopes for any corrective. I won't bore anyone with historical examples. Electoral politics grows from an overall principle of fostering independent class self-organization and self-reliance with its fulcrum resting not on campaign promises and rhetoric but issues of power. It's not related to electoral promises or to pragmatic considerations about the rivalries between Democratic slaveholders and Whig slaveholders. (Oops, historical examples are slipping in, apparently.) And, btw, the emphasis on Trump as some sort of meteor strike that came out of nowhere is just silly. Look at the impeachment with open eyes and you see a crisis inseparable from Democratic decisions to rely on executive rule by Obama rather than to fight in the court of public opinion . . . to give Dubya a free pass over WMDs and Bushdaddy repeated free passes for high crimes and misdemeanors of all sorts. And Regan. And even Nixon, into whose work the Democrats essentially dropped the investigations after his resignation. The path to Trump was paved by Democrats and much as Republicans. That's the nature of the system both serve. Bernie Sanders will be irrelevant in a matter of months. Despite all sorts of developments, the party and the media is beating the drum for nominating Joe "Lock 'em up" Biden or the nearest stand-in they might have to install to replace him. And when that happens, the people who offered the Greens such brilliant "advise" will beat the drum for whoever the Democratic hierarchy wants, denouncing those of us who aren't buying the kool-aid as closet fascists. Heard it all before. Just to make a practical observation. We don't have a lot of alternatives. Everybody in a socialist group that hasn't done anything to create such an alternative--and going through the motions hasn't sufficed--bears some responsibility for this. You don't like the Greens, but haven't done diddly to forge something better. Cheers, Mark L. _________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
