David Walters wrote:
> To wit, on another aspect of this, I'm not sure why think, because
> you've implied, that the way the P&FP organizes is "anti-democratic"?
> I think it's far more democratic that allowing people who simply
> 'register' to vote under the Party's label to decide it's program and
> politics.
(1). Because it *is* antidemocratic.
(2) I disagree. (So might those registrants, if they were to know).
That the question involves what sort of animal P&FP is, we agree [below].
We disagree on its taxonomy. (In some ways, I think, P&FP combines
the worst of *all* possible answers into a huge mosh pit).
My mention of the Electoral College was less apt than comparing the
P&FP system to a gaggle of Democrats in which the primary popular
vote counts as 0% towards a nominee who is elected 100% by the
apparatchik superdelegates of the party machinery itself.
Especially in "winner take all" California, the P&FP is less democratic
than the Democrats.
As noted, P&FP doesn't allow voters to cross party lines.
Its "own" registered voters, while allowed to vote for choice
among apparatchiks running for the Central Committees, are
not given any particular clues as to which CC candidates
happen to sup****t which Presidential candidates. (How
could these be given, when the apparatchiks have not yet
decided? It's not as if delegates or Committeepeople are
pledged to anything except a sometimes Sundays socialism.
Most P&FP voters don't even know how meaningless their
primary votes for President are, even within the little pink clot.
The Feinstein Democrats, at least, mostly *admit* which class
they propose to represent:
> No socialist party on the ballot anywhere else would ever
> open itself up for takeover in this manner.
The socialist nature of P&FP is at best conjunctural, in that even
its paper committment to socialism needs to be "reaffirmed" from
time to time .. and sometimes, it isn't.
Recently, it was "reaffirmed." (Says so, right on the website). Next,
the party nominated homeless antisocialist Nader to bear its standard.
(Do you suppose the lighting was bad?)
A partisan of class struggle might legitimately ask: what is the value of
such a committment to socialism? (I know that *you* do not pose such
a question; yet AFAICS not even you have asserted that Nader is
moving "towards" socialism by a process of Bernsteinian motion).
> At least the way it's done now groups, individuals and tendencies
> have to do some actual work to influence politics inside the P&F.
Which is exactly what the Democrats say with respect to bestowal of
their superdelegacies upon their own -- similarly selected -- elite.
You may say it rewards "activism," in a mindlessly naderish kind of way.
But its pissle activists [*] certainly don't require socialist noises to
be
made commensurate with the wood they hew and the water they draw
for an unapologetic antiunionist.
You may not (1) call it "democratic," in any sense generally understood,
nor (2) call it a formation reflecting Leninist organizational norms or
deserving class allegiance as an approximation of one.
There's an enormous distance between the P&FP's unsavory electoral
practice, as personified by Nader, and even such a crude figleaf of class
independence as exhibited by today's SWP/US.
- David Stevens
[*] pissle, pissile, or PSL (Party of Socialism & Liberation) comprises
the West Coast end of the Workers World [Marcyite] split; it is the
largest
single faction using P&FP as its 2-wheel drive shortcut Vanguard Vehicle.
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