On Aug 25, 9:41 pm, "David Stevens" <passchenda...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> 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).
We disagree.
> 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).
Probably.
> 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.
Because I'm not sure what kind of Party you think the P&F *ought* to
be or even holding up borgeois political parties as some sort of
correct democratic approach. You are assuming the *primaries* are
democratic. If a Revolutionary workers communist Trotskyoid Vibrator
party got on the ballot it would HAVE to organize along what the STATE
mandates all electoral parties to do, to wit:
Even HAVE a CC
Have CC members elected in the way the STATE mandates, not the party
So...you have NO choice in this matter. So if you are in a M-L party,
you cannot be on the ballot in this state and remain a Marxist-
Leninist party...it's AGAINST the law. Thus you need some sort of
electoral "front". The P&F, in order to remain somewhat socialist in
it's program and outlook, has to get around such a "bourgeois levy" as
the fake category of "registered voters". It does this (as do the
Greens btw and as EVERY socialist party would have to) by having the
CC ultimately decide who the candidate is. Doesn't always work, of
course (see: Nader) but it assures that the 'cadre' or activists
within the P&F hold a stronger weight inside the party.
> Especially in "winner take all" California, the P&FP is less democratic
> than the Democrats.
No, this is hardly 'democratic'...Party's can and should choose
candidates the way THEY want to. The whole process is undemocratic.
Party's are or should be "private" voluntary institutions responsible
to their own members and shouldn't not be interfered with like the
highly Bonapartist method we have in the US. "Member****p" should be
defined by the members and not just anyone who wants to be a member.
The most undemocratic method itself is the 'cross over' which allows a
racist rightwinger to participate in a left-wing anti-racist party
candidate choice method.
> As noted, P&FP doesn't allow voters to cross party lines.
Thank god for that. Highly undemocratic to allow this.
> 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.
This is a faire, albeit somewhat contorted view. First, ALL Parties,
as noted above David, HAVE to have CC elections done in this manner.
Anyone can run for the CC elections (we're talking county CC
elections) but this would be just a true for the David Steven's ultra-
trot-leninist league as is for the American independent party. All
registered voters get the ballot booklet from the STATE with all the
candidates and their platforms in it. So they know, *technically*
EXACTLY who the are voting for.
>
> 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.
It has no choice in California.
> 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.
No...the socialist aspect of the program hasn't been challenged by
anyone that I'm aware of. I don't think the paper commitment to
socialism is 'conjuctural', members of the P&F (members, not
registrants) are very committed to the idea of socialism and
presenting it publically when their candidates run for elections. It
is 'paper' because outside of elections the P&F doesn't really do
anything.
> 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?)
Contridictions abound. Clearly, as I noted previously, there is
nothing stopping Nader's people from doing this. Nor would they have a
problem in doing this in the above mentioned David Stevens ultra-left
never-red-enough party either. At least as I understand it.
> 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).
My opposition to Nader's candidacy does NOT have anything to do with a
commitment to socialism. I don't even sup****t the old SWP campaigns
from Dobbs/Carslon's 1948 campaigns upward, it's a whole different
discussion. I think "socialist" campaigns are about as good as "All
Vietnam Should Go Communist" and other ultra-leftist zero-impact
nonsense. I'm for working class campaigns but against the narrow, self-
defeating, totally substititionist campaigns used "to Build the
Party". I think they are fundementally non-Marxist (not
"anti-"Marxist) but abstracted from any real working class struggle.
It's a different debate...but I bet you didn't see that one coming?!
> > 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.
Don't confuse national elections with state requirements. As I said,
how would YOU do it?...and legally be ON the California ballot?
> 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.
I don't understand...you are drowning in your own hyperbole here.
> 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.
I wouldn't disagree here. I'm registered P&F and that's about it. I
don't hold it up as a model for anything, really. It's a ballot spot.
That's it.
David
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