On 2013-09-23, at 5:45 PM, Louis Proyect wrote: > On 9/23/13 5:35 PM, Marv Gandall wrote: >> The major parties of the Second International (British Labour, German >> SPD, French SP) and their leaders were hegemonic within the >> international working class movement, but they were being challenged >> in the tumultuous aftermath of WW I both internally from their >> radicalizing left wings and from the outside by the fledgling >> Communist parties of the new Third International. The Leninists of >> the Third International aimed to supplant the social democratic >> parties of the Second, > > Well, the Leninists were wrong about the SP, they were wrong about the > "centrists", they were wrong about lots of things.
This flowed from what proved to be an exaggerated view of the revolutionary nature of the period and of the potential for winning over the working class in a headlong confrontation with its existing leadership. Like virtually everyone on the left, then and now, the newly formed Communist parties also promoted the need for working class unity, but they often accompanied this call with a patronizing, hectoring, insistent, and belligerent attitude to those politically closest to them. Naturally, this disdainful sectarian behaviour had the effect of alienating those to whom they directed the most attention. Appeals to unity ring hollow in the absence of a palpable spirit of comradeship, an understanding which, as we know, still escapes some of the most vociferous contemporary proponents of broad left unity. > The SP of the USA was > nothing like the Democratic Party and attracted many capable > working-class militants. Cannon bragged about eviscerating the SP. True for the time, but I was addressing the virtually indistinguishable characteristics of today's Democratic Party and the US and European descendants of the old Socialist parties populated and led by the likes of Jaures and Debs. By the 30's, there was already not much to choose between Norman Thomas' Socialist Party and the New Deal Democrats with their newly-acquired industrial working class base, as Thomas and other SP leaders themselves understood. Today, the Clintons and Obamas, the Milibands and Steinbrucks and Hollandes, are truly welded at the hip and each could comfortably assume the leadership of any of their kindred parties. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
