On the below interchange between the Davids, a general comment.
What this is all about is "progressive reform" of the political
system, which California was a cornerstone of. We even had a
Progressive governor, elected on a third party slate, one Hiram
Johnson, who introduced referenda, recall, non-party elections for
municipals etc., and cross-party primary voting, all to, or so it was
claimed, take politics in California out of the clutches of the party
bosses in their smoke-filled rooms and put it into the hands of The
People.
Where it has remained ever since, of course.
On the details, I will note that it is curious that the P&FP party
bosses in their smoke-filled rooms (marijuana smoke presumably) picked
Nader, being as most of them are allegedly socialists of one species
or another. If it was the voters, as I thought, that would be
self-explanatory. But since it wasn't, just how did it happen? Who are
"Nader's people" on the PFP CC? Which group? I'd have thought all the
reform-minded socialists would be backing either McKinney or Obama.
-jh-
On Tue, 26 Aug 2008, nada wrote:
> 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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