On 3/13/16 7:22 PM, Marv Gandall wrote: > No need to fast forward, Jim. Thomas’ political trajectory was an > outgrowth of the antipathy between the reformist and the > revolutionary left which, as we know, was evident in the 1930’s and > well beyond, predating their formal split into two rival > Internationals following WWI. As a social democrat, Thomas came into > conflict with the Communist Party and the smaller Trotskyist movement > on ideological and practical grounds since all three political > currents were competing with varying degrees of influence for the > same working class constituency.
People have strange ideas about Norman Thomas. You need to read "Not Automatic", Sol Dollinger's book about the Flint sit-down strike. Thomas saw eye to eye with the left wing of the SP that had considerable strength in the area, including Genora Johnson. In terms of him voting to expel the Trotskyists, if I had been around back then, I would have voted for booting them. Anybody with political experience would no that they were simply on a raiding party. The idea of building a purely revolutionary party based on some "program" (namely a bunch of ideology cobbled together from various holy texts) is bunkum as Henry Ford put it. For better or for worse, revolutionary parties are never pure. They will always include a right faction because that reflects the realities of class composition in the proletariat. Lenin battled with Julius Martov worse than fights I've had with people on the Internet but always considered the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks as belong to the same party. Pham Binh and Lars Lih got that right, whatever else they got wrong and that's aplenty. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list pen-l@lists.csuchico.edu https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
