> On Feb 9, 2016, at 10:14 AM, raghu <[email protected]> wrote: > > Even then, the most likely outcome for such a third party would be that it is > co-opted by the Establishment, no?
Sure. Look at the hopes invested in the German Greens and what happened when they approached power. The party quickly split into fundis and realos and Joschka Fischer was coopted as foreign minister and vice-chancellor in a SPD-led government which proceeded to rollback trade union rights and working class benefits. There’s no reason to expect a different outcome if the US Green Party, so favoured by Louis, should ever become a serious threat to supplant the Democrats on the centre-left. > It is hard not to be cynical about the prospects for a Revolutionary Left > within the electoral system. Agree again. There is no peaceful, gradual, electoral road to socialism as the early social democrats hoped. If there were a revolution, the electoral system and the parties which dominate it would be turned upside down and likely disappear. Revolutions happen when the state can no longer maintain tolerable living standards and public safety. Where these conditions are absent, the cautious masses are not persuaded by the radical ideas, ie. “programs”, of rival revolutionary groups and ideologues, not until they have exhausted all possibilities of reform of the existing system. > On Feb 9, 2016, at 12:52 PM, Michael Meeropol <[email protected]> wrote: > > In response to Raghu’s point that we must "keep trying shit" till something > works, this reminds me of Paul Buhle's brilliant version of this: "Nothing > works so everything should be tried!" Or as Lenin put it, citing Napoleon, “on s’engage et puis on voit”. Expressing a similar pragmatism, Zhou en Lai described the revolutionary process as essentially one of “crossing the river by feeling for the stones”. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
