******************** POSTING RULES & NOTES ******************** #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. *****************************************************************
Howie Hawkins has a working class political perspective unlike the signers of the 'open letter.' Hawkins is vying for the presidential nomination of the Green Party of the U.S. which, as John Reimann says, is historically a petit-bourgeois political formation. IMO this was proven in 2003/4 when the Green Party rejected the candidacy of Ralph Nader (individually a middle-class reformer but allied with the fledgling Labor Party organizing effort, who had opened up a significant challenge to the capitalists' two-party political system in the 2000 election**) in order to support the Democrat presidential candidate, using the same capitalist-centric rationale manifest in today's 'open letter.' Open letter signers, like other defenders of the capitalists' two-party political monopoly, argue from a narrow-minded 'zero-sum game' framework. I think that the participation of strong independent working class candidates in capitalist state elections increases the progressive vote generally, including for the mainstream capitalist parties (Democrats in U.S.) which posture as fighting for the working class. In the case of the protest vote for the weak middle-class Green Party in the 2016 presidential election, i don't think the voting result would have been significantly different if the Green Party hadn't existed, electoral results would have remained the same. IMO there has not been a significant potential national working class presence in the U.S. political system since the mid-2000s crumbling of the Labor Party effort that had been led by Tony Mazzochi (d. 2002, btw longtime Nader ally). If Howie Hawkins is able to win the Green Party presidential nomination it might be an indication that the Green Party is beginning to develop into a working class party. Obviously i think the political outlook for working people is pretty dismal. Touche' Mark: "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." And as Mark says: "The path to Trump was paved by Democrats [as] much as Republicans. That's the nature of the system both serve." The open letter signers are mistaken to think that voting Democrat will make a qualitative difference in implementing 'real solutions' for the growing crises of the capitalist system. **The myth that Nader cost Gore the 2000 presidential election, now 'common knowledge' in the mainstream media and also apparently with the 'open letter' signers, was created by defenders of the capitalist two-party political system to attack Nader and pressure the Green Party's leadership not to run Nader again in 2004. The reality is that half of Florida's registered Democrats didn't bother to vote in 2000 and 12% of them - over 200,000 - voted for Bush. In addition to Nader/Greens, each of the other seven third party presidential candidates on the Florida ballot in 2000 got more than the 543 votes that supposedly made the difference, see < http://www.cagreens.org/alameda/city/0803myth/myth.html>. In addition to voter suppression and related Republican dirty tricks, Gore (longtime fixture of the capitalist system) didn't even put up a fight for a full Florida recount. <http://www.factcheck.org/2008/01/the-florida-recount-of-2000> On Fri, Jan 24, 2020 at 3:12 PM Louis Proyect via Marxism < marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu> wrote: > > On 1/24/20 12:06 PM, John Reimann via Marxism wrote: > > The Greens are not a working class party; they are a petit bourgeois > party. > > They did not develop out of a movement of the working class and have no > > base in any part of the working class movement. > > > Yeah, petit bourgeois. That about sums up this kind of politics that > refuses to get behind a candidate like Howie Hawkins, who was a > warehouse worker for decades and a Teamster union member. If this was > 1934, we'd all be pushing for a labor party because there was a class > dynamic that made it possible. We are not in 1934, comrades. Time to > wake up and smell the coffee. > > _________________________________________________________ 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
