Marv wrote:
Hi Julio: Is this discussion so heated, more so than the usual?
I think it's alright. Election day is near and, naturally, the issues are touchy.
I almost always agree with you, including your latest remarks about the reorientation of Goff, Fletcher, et al. I've thought for a long time that it's wrong to discourage any efforts to fashion a DP left, even worse to stridently denounce those leftists who try - the counter-argument being that the dominant DP leadership is virtually indistinguishable from the Republicans and will resort to any undemocratic means to crush dissent from below. I don't think the chances of organizing large numbers are any greater in the Greens, probably less.
Indeed, there is a ferocious struggle within the DP. The old machine built around funding from large, special-interest donors (the Rahm Emmanuel-Chuck Schumer-Hillary Clinton wing), versus the more grassroots approach of the Progressive wing (the Howard Dean-Donna Brazile-Arianna Huffington wing), which has become more influential thanks to the net. Cooperation with the Democrats is a *strategic* necessity for the left to grow and to lead independent working-class movements. This view has to be stated categorically, because it goes against the prejudices of the sectarian left and a few lose canons with a similar outlook pretending to own the patent of Marx and Marxism in the U.S. It still surprises me how little substantive argument is marshalled against views like mine.
But I'm not sure I understand your point above. I thought Goff was promoting the idea of a "fascist threat" to justify his decision.
No. For what I can read, Stan's point is very nuanced. He's still far from my views or from Bill Fletcher's call to build a "neo-Rainbow" coalition. Stan seems to believe that a Democratic takeover of the House of Representatives would stir things up enough to clear some political space for the radical left. He says it was right not to support the Dems in 2004, but now it is not. So people now should vote Democrat. His position, as far as I can read, is not premised on exaggerating any fascist threat or saying that the fascists in the U.S. have already dismantled the institutions of formal democracy. Stan's piece on Elections doesn't even use the words "fascism" or "fascist"! That all should be credited to Louis Proyect's ability to distort views he dislikes. Now, in all fairness, I don't think Stan is making any pronouncement over local races. We are all talking about races that are relevant to national politics. In local races, which party to choose in an electoral juncture depends (or should depend) on particular local circumstances. But I don't want to qualify my views so much, because I think the problem is that people in the left don't realize how the need to cooperate with the DP is *strategic*.
My sense is there are plenty of issues roiling the DP ranks - most of all, Iraq - and that this spectre is not one of them, so that it could be seen as a diversion.
In this debate, this issue of "fascism" wasn't introduced by Stan. It was introduced by Louis Proyect, out of the blue. Stan wrote a piece a while ago, titled "Sowing the Seeds of Fascism in the U.S." or something like that, focused on his own *experience* in the U.S. armed forces. In other pieces, one he wrote later about the erosion of individual rights in the U.S. (in which he calls people to start up a third party!), he alludes to "emergent" or "nascent" fascist tendencies in the U.S. So, as you can see, he has been referring to a threat, not to a consummated fact. I think you're right about being careful in the use of terms against Bush, because of the tremendous role of the mass media in distorting and reframing political speech in the country. If I were the PR chief of the U.S. Left, the talking points I'd hand out to all the lefties out there would be sheer *cut-and-dry, factual-based* accusations against Bush and Co. Little in the form of historical interpretation or terms that arise very strong reactions. Not only I'd warn the lefties against overstating our case, I'd advocate strongly for understating it instead! It's much better that people draw conclusions ahead of us, than people perceive us as disconnected from reality. We know that if we call Bush names adequate to what he's done and stands for, the media can easily boomerang them against us and make us look like wild-eye wackos. I'd just try not to make their work a bit harder. But I'm not the PR chief of the U.S. Left. And, among people with a little sense of history, the accusations of a fascist threat are not to be dismissed out of hand. In historical perspective, this is a fair issue. But then the dispute should be about the appropriate content of the category of fascism, etc. Historical similarities and differences. The way fascism has evolved in different conditions. Etc. Unfortunately, with the exception of Melvin (who has taken the issue for what it is), the rest of us are mixing it up with the merits or lack thereof of Stan's call to vote Democrat on 11/7. Thanks Louis for helping us clarify things.
You also say "any mention of a fascist threat weakens our argument". So what am I missing?
I was using the rhetorical "we." Trying to show how things look from Louis Proyect's perspective. I said that *if* "we" operate under the categorical imperative of *not* voting for the Dems... etc. That's not my categorical imperative though. Julio
