----- Original Message -----
From: "Jim Devine" <[email protected]>
To: "Progressive Economics" <[email protected]>
Sent: Thursday, August 13, 2009 11:56 AM
Subject: Re: [Pen-l] Re: Those town hall confrontations
(was:forthoseinterested in the "F word")
I don't think the discussion is helped by references to an
emotion-laden term such as "Trotskyists."
On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 8:36 AM, Marv Gandall<[email protected]>
wrote:
Shane writes:
So there is a "fascist" menace in America comparable, even in the
slightest, to Hitler in 1931? And Obama leads a "working class
party?" Come on!
======================================
There is no fascist menace in America comparable, even in the slightest,
to
Hitler in 1931, and I've consistently argued against those who have
suggested as such on this and other lists. There is, however, a large
contingent of non-fascist right-wing reactionaries within the ruling and
working classes who have energetically mobilized to block reforms demanded
by the left, and I think Julio is right in proposing the left should not
stand aloof from these struggles - particularly when they are today the
only
social struggles being waged, the socialist movement effectively having
disappeared from the historical stage.
I also agree that Obama leads a bourgeois liberal party, not a working
class
one, as we understand the distinction. Whether to include bourgeois
liberal
parties in coalitions against the right or to organize independently of
the
liberals was a controversial subject within the workers' movement, with
Trotskyists like yourself the most prominent exponents of the latter
position. But even the Trotskyists, as I recall, never suggested that the
workers', while organizing independently of the liberal parties, should
concentrate their attacks on the leaders of those parties rather than
participating in a common defence against reactionary mobs or armies - a
notion which you introduced into the discussion and which makes little
sense
to me.
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--
Jim Devine / "All science would be superfluous if the form of
appearance of things directly coincided with their essence." -- KM
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