I think that marxists/revolutionary socialists engage in electoral politics as a subsidiary tactic in a strategy of building a working class organization/party that will eventually be capable of a significant leadership role in mobilizing revolutionary mass action (i.e. "mass strike" as Rosa Luxemburg described what she saw in Russia (Russian occupied Poland) in 1905. Revolutionary socialists don't engage in the capitalists' "democratic" political system looking for eventual 'success' within that system but in order to overthrow that system, replace it with workers' democracy.
Since imo there was no revolutionary socialist presidential election campaign to support, i voted for the Green Party's Walker/Hawkins ticket in the presidential election as my best choice. I found in my limited (old age in a pandemic) social and political interactions that saying i was voting for the Green Party Walker/Hawkins ticket often opened up an opportunity to explain my views on the capitalists' two-party political system and the need for a politically independent working class party (sometimes even on socialism and revolution). Although the Green Party's presidential candidates this year are revolutionary-socialist-minded individuals, i don't think the Green Party in the U.S. is today or ever has been a revolutionary socialist party. As i understand Mark to suggest, there probably needs to be a massive class struggle upsurge to make the creation of such a party possible. Dayne On Sun, Nov 8, 2020 at 4:14 PM Mark Lause <[email protected]> wrote: > > An emphasis on local and state action is not unreasonable, but the history of > insurgent parties that do not field some sort of national ticket is not > especially good. Rather understandably, the two dominant parties use the > opportunity to rip any threatening third party to pieces. > > As to building up a power base, any decision to run a lot of local candidates > won't mean beans if you don't have enough engaged people to even fill the > ticket, much what you need to actually elect people. None of it matters > unless there's a serious organization with an engaged membership behind it. > > Ditto the talk about a united front of the left in the elections. This > should have happened fifty years ago but there were reasons it didn't. Those > same reasons are there. They will never take any initiatives to cooperate. > This will not happen until there's a genuine pull towards that unity from the > outside of these groups. The great historic failure of the Greens actually > lies right there. > -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#3321): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/3321 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/78103542/21656 -=-=- 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. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/8674936/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
