The French turn was used to describe entry into the Socialist Party and has to do with the relationship of a much smaller Trotskyist group to a mass working class party. It took place in the response to indications that the social democrats and Communists in France had, by 1934, drawn the right conclusions from the suicidal course of the German Left. The American adoption of this strategy came in 1936, and resulted in drawing together a radical current within the Socialist Party around the _Socialist Appeal_. Setting aside whether or not this was a good idea, the results were certainly mixed and the successes did not match the expectations.
Other than having a recognizable advertising label, going into the Democratic party would be neither a French turn, nor possible, nor produce anything new. 1. Democratic party is a capitalist party. This isn't a pejorative statement but a recognition of proprietorship, an acknowledgement of the law of gravity. American politics is structured around raising money, and all the major officeholders (and aspirants to major office) owe their position to donors resenting large corporations or lobbyists on their behalf. American politics has shifted far to the right since the 1970s and 1980s when both parties embraced the wholesale deregulation of business (including the media) in the 1980s, That's how, in the last election, the Democrats nominated the most overtly Nixonized candidate it could find--the only person farther right than Biden was quite literally a Republican billionaire. 2. Panic-mongering aside, the conditions we face today bear no resemblance to France in the 1930s. Nazis have not just come to power in Canada. If the immediate prospects of fascism in the U.S. have risen slightly higher than nil, it is owed to the utterly ineffective Democratic responses to the willingness of a Trumpified Republican sense that they can use psychotically right-wing groups to their advantage. 3. Given your New Zealand email address, you get the benefit of the doubt on some of this, but you should know that you cannot "enter" the Demcocratic party, because it is not a membership organization. The only role a citizen can play in the process of "self-government" in America is to vote their consumer preference in the periodic official surveys of over which of the rival parties has the best sales pitch. In that sense, a secret poll about whether or not socialists should vote Democratic suits the system nicely. 4. This proposes nothing new. A sizeable section of the working class--particularly those organized into unions--has been looking for change to the Democratic party since FDR and longer. The result of this over the nearly last half century has essentially ratified the strategy of the Democratic leadership to move ever-rightward. Cheers, Mark L. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#6847): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/6847 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/80967958/21656 Mute #poll-notice:https://groups.io/g/marxmail/mutehashtag/poll-notice -=-=- 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/8674936/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
