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Christian asked, "How is it impossible for a 'single hegemonic party' to arise in the U.S. if the capitalists already have one?" This is a fundamentally revealing question from so many angles. Let's examine it from both ends...and pick it up for a look at it from top to bottom.... >From one end, the working class is vastly larger and more complex than the capitalist class . it would take a lot of shoehorning to squeeze all those various concerns and interests into as narrow a spectrum of views as the capitalists permit. >From the other--rhetoric and bullshit aside--the American capitalists don't have a single hegemonic party because they've found ruling through two better suits their purposes, and the loss of public confidence in both just hints at the disaffection that'd be there if there was only one. Now, let's pick up the question and look at it from the top down... Can't we all understand that asserting that something's not "impossible" is a piss-poor recommendation for trying it? It's not impossible that the aliens who made a wrong turn at Roswell might decide to come back and fight the parking ticket. Or we might have another supervolcano blow us all away. Theoretical physics says it's statistically possible for a human being to pass right through a solid object, if we'd keep trying it for slightly longer than the expected life of the universe. Is life so short and reason so fleeting that anyone shouldo waste their time, energy and effort and something that's merely not "impossible"? Finally, a quick look at the underside of this question reveals the proposition to be as utterly impossible as anything we can reasonably say is impossible. Not only does history never repeat itself, but a single party never, ever made a revolution. The complex and diverse nature of the movement was evident not just in the 1960s but in any honest assessment of serious and successful movements before that...unless makers of myths want to purge everybody out of process after-the-fact to leave one party. So, the party project--as being presented here--seems to me to be nothing if not flawed methodologically, historically, and politically. The original question was what the tasks of a party should be. This simply puts the cart before the horse for Marxists, by which I mean people who approach the problem as materialists. (I, of course, have no control over and no interest in those who decide to call themselves Marxist for any other reason.) How we decide how to do something turns on our answer to the old question: "What is to be done?" Before anything else--to be serious--this discussion should start by examining what tasks need to be performed at this point.... Once that's done, we can then break the party question into digestible and discussable components. Four leap to mind.... 1. What would a (yet another) socialist party do in performance of those tasks? 2. Why would it have to be a "socialist" party? 3. Why would it have to be a "party" of any sort? 4. And why just one? ML ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
