On Fri, May 3, 2024 at 04:26 PM, John Edmundson wrote: > > I sense Lenin spinning in his grave every time a Marxist says 'Vote Biden' > or 'Vote Democrat", or 'Vote Labour'. The rope stopped supporting the > hanging man a century ago.
A reminder that conditions were somewhat different then, John, and conditions are what determine political strategy. If we were discussing the issue in the wake of a revolutionary socialist revolution which had just overthrown Putin in Russia and had inspired a wave of revolutionary strikes and workers’ councils in Zelensky's Ukraine and Scholz's Germany and elsewhere throughout Europe, and the choice in the US was between Biden and a Socialist Party equally inspired and supported by millions of Americans and led by a latter day Debs, no question Lenin would be spinning in his grave if we chose to stand in the way of history. Lenin’s metaphor about the rope supporting a hanged man was, as you know, in response to British Marxists who wanted the fledgling CPGB to oppose rather than support the Labour Party. Lenin cited the adverse relationship of forces to justify the latter strategy even in those extraordinary revolutionary times more than “a century ago". There are no longer any parties with an anticapitalist program based on the trade unions. There is no longer a dime’s worth of difference between the Democrats and the old social democratic parties in terms of ideology and program, leadership, and social base. Those who still counterpose voting for an “workers party" against a "bourgeois party" are effectively counselling abstention from electoral politics, whether they realize it or not. Debating that course of action would at least have some contemporary relevance. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#30206): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/30206 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/105891162/21656 -=-=- 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. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/8674936/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
