Fantastic post.

Don’t think (or imply) I’m arguing “After Palin, us.” Don’t think i’m unaware of our radical weakness. Don’t imply we have nothing to offer but blog space. Don’t imply that anyone suffers from indifference to long-term fascist dangers.

But what would be the impact of having Rand Paul or a few other brownshirts in Congress? Do we know? Is it really so shattering or scary to have those new pigs among those old ones? Is he really the first Senator who resents the 1965 Civil Rights Act? Why be panicked or strategically diverted over such things?

You think it is knowable who it rallies or where it pushes events? Should we assume that only the liberals can answer them, or that only the Right can gain from the escalating fragmentation of the center? Or that radical voices have no potential say in the outcome?

There is a semi-permanent fascist right in this country that will rise and fall and rise again. In fact, there will be no serious radical <em>opening</em> in our future that does not include the parallel and entrwined rise of a real, powerful, enraged Right. If our habit is to throw away our own banners and stampede behind the center at the sight of a few popular fascists, well then there is literally no prospect of any positive change.

We need to build a revolutionary movement. From scratch. A little focus would be good. Not dispersal for tactical reasons with every new breeze.

The first step to <em>any</em> advance is not to throw away what we have. Why act like "having a little" is the equivalent of "having nothing"? We have what we have. A voice, an idea, a will, an initial audience, and some glimmer of potent forbidden truths. And handled well that can be a lot.

We have on our side the communism of a few, and (potentially) the discontent of the many. If we don’t even start, we don’t ever arrive.

Let's raise our heads.

Righteous, Nando... righteous!

In many ways, the Bush era was "better" for the Left than Obama, there is no doubt. Though I recognize the danger posed by the fascist-like "Tea Party," I do not think it is a fundamental threat to the existing social contract, as was Hitler fascism. Furthermore, I'd venture to say that the "Third Way" liberals are the biggest threat to the emergence of a truly progressive alternative. Many people thought they were getting that with Obama, but not so.

Yes. "We have on our side the communism of a few and the discontent of many"

And that means something.

And we have this all over the world.

And that means something.

Great article.

Using words like "shit" and "fuck" in political writing stopped being provocative and edgy in about 1969. Now it just makes you look like you have nothing to say.

Nando really hasn't answered Tellnolies' question about what he is promoting as an alternative other than "come participate in our blog." "Don’t imply we have nothing to offer but blog space" is not really an answer unless you explain what you <i>do</i> have to offer. And is there really any more content in a phrase like "let's raise our heads" than there is in one like "yes we can?"

I am voting for the Democrats, not out of any misplaced hope in them, nor because I am "cowering" in fear of anyone -- but simply because, given the opportunity to express my preference between a set of generally poor options, I will do so. I don't believe that doing so compromises me in any way. Why should it?

I don't believe that one can reasonably argue one one hand that voting "doesn't matter," and on the other that voting makes you "part of the problem." Either something is important or it is unimportant. If it is unimportant, then how can doing it make you "part of the problem"?

The idea that the act of voting somehow legitimates the system is pure fetishism. It's the sort of claim one would expect the starry-eyed idealist proponents of bourgeois democracy to make (i.e. by voting you are participating in the great tradition of American democracy, granting the consent of the governed on which our republic is based, etc.) -- not its clear-minded materialist opponents.

By all means let's "build a revolutionary movement." But how about a little less "righteous" anger and a little more "focus" -- which is, after all, what you say we need?

This is the kind of indignation we need to be expressing about the system, Democrats included. And right now, the widespread disillusionment with the Obama administration might provide a wider audience for such sentiments.

As dangerous as the radical right is, the biggest threats to people in the US remain incarceration, deportations, foreclosures, police brutality, and other structural oppressions the Democrats simply cannot ameliorate based on their dependence on capitalist imperialism. We all know this, but this message gets lost in struggles for reforms that have increasingly diminishing returns. Much of the radical left has very narrow horizons of what is possible, which causes it to swallow one of its greatest assets--righteous indignation against the brutalities of capitalism and white supremacy--in favor of chasing (on the national level) a gutted EFCA, an inadequate health care bill, and potentially devastating immigration reforms. All of this is excused by claiming, "something is better than nothing"--and usually we get nothing anyway.

We can't ignore the struggle for peoples' immediate needs, but going about this by offering critical support to the Democrats is not only diluting our message and analysis, but it's *not working*. We don't have the forces necessary to unite with the left wing of the Dems and retain our autonomy--and I remain unconvinced that the progressive wing of the Dems has much power anyway.

Tellnolies' point that we need to be proposing alternatives is well taken. Uncompromisingly radical electoral campaigns on the local level seem to be useful strategies. Temporary, tactical alliances with liberal forces against the Tea Party will be necessary. There's a lot of exploration to be done.

Dave: Voting legitimises the system because it allows the capitalist parties to pretend that they <b>do</b> have the 'consent of the governed'. It allows Obama to pretend that extending the occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq, increasing funding for Israeli oppression of the Palestinians, and attempting to silence those who speak out against those acts is 'enacting the will of the American people'.

Nando, great piece.

Someone pointed me to another essay making similar excellent points (Obama's Finest Hour: Killing Innocent People For "Made-Up Crap"):

http://www.chris-floyd.com/articles/1-latest-news/2035-obamas-finest-hour-killing-innocent-people-fo

Excerpts:

"Friends, it's very simple: if you support Barack Obama and the Democrats -- even if reluctantly, even if you're just being all sophisticatedly super-savvy and blogospherically strategic about it, playing the "long game" or eleven-dimensional chess or what have you -- you are supporting the outright murder of innocent people who have never done anything against you or yours."

. . .

""But oh my gosh, oh my lord, we have to support Obama! What if those Tea Party Republicans get into power? What would happen then?" What would happen? The same goddamned thing that's happening right now, that's what. More and more war, more and more murder, more and more domination by a militarist kleptocracy."

. . .

"I'm not going to spend my brief time here on earth standing with blood-soaked killers, no matter what factional name they give themselves, or what loyalties they might claim on our myth-clouded memories of the past. I'm not going to teach my children that all we can do is to grovel before one child-murdering maniac or another, to keep quiet, to never speak the truth, to sell their votes, their dignity and their souls to murderers who would pervert every good instinct -- and every bad instinct -- every worthy hope and every nasty fear, to keep themselves in power."

"After Palin, Hillary!" And maybe even "After Hillary, Condie!" In any event, that type of hypothesis is more in line with the shape of real politics today. People who relentlessly hype the Teabaggers as a new "fascist force" are simply forgetting an old lesson which was appreciated by Vladimir Lenin and Adolf Hitler (albeit from different ideological perspectives): the need for an independent party.

There have been a lot of stories produced about the connection of the Koch brothers to financing Teabagging. Those stories are interesting in themselves, but the central lesson is often lost. The Teabaggers are a ramshackle network of mostly angry white men who the Kochs and other traditional backers of the Republican Party decided to start funding as a way of generating diversions from the 8 years of Bush. As such, the Teabaggers do not represent an incipient movement towards a truly new Right-wing.

The reason why the National Socialist German Workers Party started small was because they arose in rivalry to the traditional German conservative parties. Hitler could have tried hiring himself out to some larger conservative organizations, but he felt the need for a new party with its own independent agenda. In this respect Hitler was mirroring Lenin's arguments about the need for the revolutionary to stand independently apart from the others.

If some new leader emerges who declares a decided break from the Republican Party and sets out to build a new white nationalist party from the ground up, then that will call for special notice. But without such an independent party born among the Right-wing, there can be no white nationalist surge which changes the direction of things.

That direction of the Republican Party was set a long time ago by people like Nelson Rockefeller who acted as Governor of New York State to prohibit discrimination in jobs and housing. At the same time, he pushed for tougher drug laws and took a hard-line towards the Attica uprising. Nelson Rockefeller was a conservative reformer who treated the Jim Crow laws as an embarrassment left over from feudalism, to be replaced by a more appropriate capitalism.

In the 1970s, with stagflation, there was a shift to the Right which led to some attacks on policies which Rockefeller Republicans had advocated. But that shift to the Right went in the direction of Milton Friedman, not Strom Thurmond. It involved attacks on Affirmative Action (which the Republican Richard Nixon had signed into law) from a Friedmanesque perspective, not a white nationalist one. If anything the last 3 decades since the Reagan victory of 1980 have just reaffirmed the basic direction away from the Thurmondesque perspective. Alan Keyes, Clarence Thomas, Colin Powell, Condoleeza Rice, these were all high level appointments made under Republican administrations.

If there were to be a real resurgence of white nationalist politics then an absolute break from the Republican Party would have to be the first order of business. It is not possible to build such a movement while depending upon the purse-strings of the Republican-oriented Koch brothers. That fact is important not just to white nationalists who may dream of restoring Jim Crow, but to any opponents who wish to measure the likely impact of the Teabaggers on real world politics.

In the present state, the only point of significance to the Teabaggers is that they represent a stalking horse for the Republican Party at a time when 8 years of Bush have been a general embarrassment. But Teabaggers do not represent an actual shift away from the directions set for the Republican Party by influential figures such as David &amp; Nelson Rockefeller, Milton Friedman, Irving Kristol, Norman Podhoretz, Richard Pipes and others like them. To be able to set such a new direction for the Right-wing the Teabaggers would have to build a new party, and they aren't doing that at present.

Something which a very large percentage of US Leftists need to be more wary of is the point made by Marx about how people have a tendency to dress up modern battles in outfits from antiquity. I've seen a fair share of Leftists who talk as if they're just waiting for the moment when the crisis of capitalism forces the ruling class to seek to return to the days of Jefferson Davis, Robert Lee, Strom Thurmond, &amp; George Wallace, and maybe then the class battles will finally become clear to everyone. It won't happen, and a Leftist strategy which acts as if it expects this can only be diversionary.

To Mike and the others, I haven't been posting much but have been following the blog.

A few things I have been meaning to say...

I think tell no lies and Dave have both made a valid point that I think many other are also thinking. Nando is correct in his assertion that we need something different to emerge, but what is that. I am curious at what kasama is doing other than running a blog.

I will also say that without the posts from this site and a few others of similar shades, I would have literally nowhere to turn on the internet for radical news. That said, The blog could also be used as an organizing tool for local initiatives. I.e. Meet here in person, lets do this... Lets get some camera's together and go harass police while they target youth in the city... lets meet at such and such intersection near such and such prison and voice our opposition in public view to jails and detention centers.

These things will always start small, but thousands of people feel the same way. And if you are positioned in the public way, your chances of linking up with other like minded people goes from 0 on the internet, to greater than 0 in public.

Again to reiterate, I find Kasama to be a very valuable radical news source and discussion site. But we can all agree that it presents no real challenge oppressive systems and institutions.

What do others think...

I want to thank Nando for this provocative post (which I plan to "share" via facebook, in a moment). Not only does it make a number of crucial points in an incisive and bold way, but it has stimulated some excellent discussion.

I have a couple of disparate points to make:

1) Tiger L glad to see you jumping into the discussion! Welcome! I think that the point you raise about coming up with additional, alternative, practice-oriented use of this blog is an important one. Perhaps if you were to come up with a developed proposal, or a model for what such work might entail, the site might post it, for discussion, or perhaps for actual experimentation...There is no shortage of issues to pick from for concerted action...For instance, there has recently been a videotaped beating of a 16 year old youth in Boston where I reside (it happened on the campus of Roxbury Community College), I wonder how many people in Boston are reading Kasama and could be brought together by a meet-up addressing this issue in a radical way (and also how many people could be brought into these discussions through such an action)...? Or, alternatively, even at this late date, we might coordinate some sort of election-day (or day after election day) action that is aimed at exposing the system and its (new) representatives...Or that perhaps takes that "Vote Every Day, Not When They Tell You Too" line to the streets with a Kasama leaflet. I am really just brainstorming here...But I want to encourage us all to take Tiger L's point seriously.

2) I too, think that Dave D and Tell No Lies raise some important points and questions. In fact I think that--*moderator note!*--that some version of Tell No Lies's last post (#11) deserves to be reposted as its own article.
TNL, the only place where I am not with you is in your closing call for establishing a radical pole WITHIN the democratic party...Can you or have you elaborated what this strategy would look like concretely? And can Nando or others offer their critiques of said strategy (or point us to where you already have)?

3) To Nando: You raise a great agitational point when you write, "Those who promoted Obama as change now ask us to embrace the impossibility of real change. They expect us to eat shit."...To which I would only suggest adding: "AND LIKE IT!"

Tellnolies wrote:
<blockquote>
"Online indignation is cheap."</blockquote>

Agreed. It shouldn't remain online, nor did I mean to suggest that it is in any way sufficient on its own. I suppose I had such a strong positive response to Nando's post because these pointed expressions of frustration with a view of the Democrats that is pervasive, even hegemonic, in some radical circles aren't being aired frequently enough.

This indignation and the lines of demarcation that it draws can serve as a catalyst for further analysis (and seems to have done so, given the barrage of thoughtful responses it has prompted).

<blockquote>"What makes Kasama so valuable is that it is a place where ideas — theory, strategy, analysis — get argued out in a more serious way than elsewhere on the left, that it demands more of revolutionaries than indignation."</blockquote>

Also, agreed, and I think it would be worthwhile for Kasama to periodically revisit some of the valuable theoretical and analytic contributions offered on the site. Sometimes these get lost in the shuffle.

THe most important thing about elections under bourgeois democracy in 21st century America is that it is IDEOLOGICAL poison, and the more you use it the more the poison spreads.

You cannot understand why this American system continues to hold legitimacy wihtout looking at the ideological stranglehold democracy has on all of us, to one degree or another -- including on peop0les around the world who want to model America where they are or come here to live.

This is the mother's milk we were all raised on; to even think for one minute we are not affected by this suckling is to completely misunderstand the role of consciousness (and the unconscious as well) in making revolutionary transformation.

This is how, for example, voting can be not important (in altering the system in any meaningful ways) and vitally important (as an ideological shackle mitigating against revolution.

THe fact that there are still those who know themselves to be revolutionaries and communists, who can honestly imagine voting as being other than poison, demonstrates the potency of this corrosive ideology. Yes, what happens within elections is part of what we need to analyize, to agitate around, to expose, expose, expose... but not participate in nor rally peopleto be the same.

TNL writes:

<blockquote>"There can be no serious revolutionary movement in the US without a rupture within the Democratic Party. I’ve argued elsewhere that this will require organized activity within the Democratic Party to constitute an explicitly radical anti-capitalist pole and to sharpen always present contradictions between the leadership and the base of the party, as well as outside it."
</blockquote>

The same thing was true in the 19th century when the Whigs had Abraham Lincoln as a candidate. But serious opponents of slavery had no business in the Whigs. Their place was in the Free Soil Party and other abolitionist formations. In fact we have more leverage by forming radical parties with a clear and uncompromising message. Of course, our job is more difficult given the fact that we don't have the class forces at our disposal that the incipient Republican Party had in the 1850s. But then again, once those class forces start going into motion, they will be an irresistible force unlike the Republicans who eventually betrayed Reconstruction.

TNL writes:

<blockquote>"First, no serious potential for a revolutionary seizure of power will emerge without the broad masses of people collectively experiencing the exhaustion of the electoral system. The electoral system is a profoundly stabilizing force for capitalism and until its limits are revealed through practical experience by a large fraction of the population, there will not be a sufficiently braod base from which to actually make revolution."</blockquote>



Yes, exactly right. By going into this Party, and elections more generally, we cement the cracks and fissures rather than amplifying the shattering.

Experience-to-exhaustion with bourgeois democracy does not necessarily imply leading people into the election booth and then summing up afterwards how that sucked. By exposing every single broken election promise, every single move of empire against the masses of people here and internationally... that is one way to undermine and prepare American democracy for shattering.

TNL: Thanks for the elaboration.

So as I understand your position of struggling within (to split) the Democratic party (through an anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist "party within a party") this strategy is predicated on FIRST establishing a strong and well-organized radical-communist core, one that is OUTSIDE the DParty and totally politically independent of it. Thus, your position seems to me more of a "future possibility after reconception/regroupment of a new core" rather than a strategic plan for the near-future. The kind of gathering and strengthening of a communist core that Nando is calling for remains the first and crucial task of the moment....Do you agree with this characterization?

As you yourself write, "that even with all the caveats implied by the idea of a “party within the party” that it is fraught with dangers and will require a truly disciplined leadership and core to avoid the powerful pull of opportunism." ...We are a long while from having "a truly disciplined leadership and core" at this point, right?

Also, you write: "...no serious potential for a revolutionary seizure of power will emerge without the broad masses of people collectively experiencing the exhaustion of the electoral system. The electoral system is a profoundly stabilizing force for capitalism and until its limits are revealed through practical experience by a large fraction of the population, there will not be a sufficiently braod base from which to actually make revolution."

This passage rasies important questions. It seems to me that I can hear the influence of the Nepali Maobadi in your approach here, right? Interesting. But one question would be: How much 'collective experience' of exhaustion do people really need to have the true nature of the electoral system "revealed" to them? Certainly the recent experience of the Bush-to-Obama "change" is rich with potential for revealing the limits of the electoral system (and capitalist-imperialist system more generally), already, no? Those who thought (naively) that Obama's election would bring some sort of fundemental positive change to their lives and the issues that matter to them should be/are reeling. How much more "collective experience of electoral exhaustion" is necessary?

Don't we have to think about what exactly the relationship between "experience" and "revelation" is here? Obviously, no amount of "experience" of failure and frustration will lead to radical revelations unless that experience is properly mediated through certain kinds of ideas and analysis, right? This brings us back to previous discussions about the mass line, methinks. On the other hand, radical anti-system "exposures" that don't take people's present consciousness and aspirations as well as their recent experiences seriously run the risk
of sounding sectarian and never being taken seriously themselves.

*****

On a very different note: I have been noting the recurring analogies to the 19th century and the shattering of the Whig Party, which appears to have been both the result of and condition of a re-polarization of American politics over the question of slavery. Along these lines, I keep wondering: What would be the 21st century equivalent of John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry? I wonder what Badiou and company would make of this historical event? And what we can learn from it-- from the way it rippled through its particular situation, how various groups related to it, made the most of it, or were rendered marginal by the waves that were soon to follow...

I thought it might be worth bringing Badiou into this discussion of participation in electoral poltics.

Here is one quote I dug up on the topic:


<blockquote>Elections are generally decided by the small group of the hesitant, those who do not posses a stable, pre-formed opinion. People who have a genuine commitment constitute fixed blocks; then there is a small group of people in what is called the centre, who sometimes go one way, sometimes the other. And you can see why a decision taken by people whose principal characteristic is hesitation is a very particular decision; it is not a decision taken by decisive people; it is a decision of the undecided, or of those who have not decided and who will then decide for reasons of opportunity, or last-minute reasons. So the function of choice in its true breadth is absent. There is proximity, rather than distance. The election does not create a gap, it is the rule, it creates the realization of the rule."
-Alain Badiou</blockquote>

well said

On the John Brown / 19th century Whig Party splitting analogy, one more time:

I think it is worth reflecting on the escalating of anti-immigrant laws, raids, and deportations as in some ways akin to the passage and enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. This was an act which radicalized a whole bunch of abolitionist sentiment, and pushed many people from a position of passive resistance (many were advocating for the Northern states to leave the union to cut themselves off from the slave south) into one of more active resistance, and even in some cases a willingness to engage in or to support the use of defensive or offensive violence to protect escaped slaves in Northern cities, (or in John Brown's case to free slaves and organize them to topple the very slave system). I am not sure exactly how this act--and the reactions to it--affected the Whig Party but I am sure there was a dramatic impact there as well.

It seems to me that we should be anticipating that in the days ahead we might see something like the militant reactions against the Fugitive Slave Act...A John Brown type "act" here might entail, someone or some group out there organizing counter-raids vs. ICE deportation squads, engaging in a militant illegal violent fightback against the new age slave recaptors. I am not saying that we should be organizing such counter-raid actions ourselves...But we might think about how we can be organizing and orienting ourselves and others so that when actions like this take place we are positioned to relate to them, and the ripples they produce, in productive ways.

I'll Fly Away by Mike Ely is an important pamphlet for today. I had someone ask me for a copy of it for a program he is planning on resistance against slavery for Black History Month.

Another Kasama pamphlet that I use is Where's Our Mississippi? by John Steele. Here is the ending:


<blockquote>"I have not written about the summer of 64 before and I don't do it now in order to memorialize a righteous struggle of yesterday. My purpose and thoughts are much more focused on today - and tomorrow.
What swept me into the civil rights struggle was in large part the utter moral clarity of what was involved; the clear evil of institutionalized white supremacy, and the courage and nobility represented by the movement which was going directly up against it.

Is such clarity possible today?

Well...we have a war in Iraq of unrelenting brutality, wrong and illegal, from its first inception, now in its fifth year with no real exit in sight no matter who is elected in fall.
We have a systematic global program of kidnapping, assassination, secret prisons, torture, indefinite detention without charges or trial - all proclaimed as America's right, institutionalized over the course of the past seven years and facing no more than tweeks and modifications through the normal processes of politics and government.

And we have a vast program of roundups, detentions and deportations within this country - the burgeoning campaign against undocumented workers, with no resolution in sight.

And that's only the beginning.

Another aspect of 1964. We did'nt know how all this would turn out. This whole movement has been enshrined and mummified in the telling of history. Retrospectively it has been given the air of inevitability.

It was not inevitable. There was no road already there. The road was made by walking - and fighting.

The course of things was not all clear then. Strongly felt debates and struggles shaped strategy and tactics and philosophy raged at each stage of the struggle. These experiences opened many of us up to new revolutionary ideas - which were being raised throughout the world at that time.

"Where is Our Mississippi Today?"</blockquote>



(end of the end of Where's Our Mississippi?

Today I think the Kasama debates and the emphasis on new theory are getting us ready for our Mississippi. We won't just wake up and see it. It won't be announced. We may have to fight to recognize it.

I think the Mudslide article is important.

What a bunch of childish shit.

So let me see, don't vote Democrat because they're just like the Repugs. And in two years...four years...six years...eight years...ten years...er...well sometime in the not too distant future the American working class will pull its collective head out its collective ass and vote socialist or Green or whatever.

Of course whenever I make the above statement you radicals immediately call me a centrist, a sell-out, but how many of you radicals ever had a union card? how many of you ever worked with union members who voted Republican because "Clinton's lust for women is going to bring ruin to the nation;" "I'm voting for Boosh 'cause he's for the death penalty;" "the death tax the working man's enemy" and so on and so forth. This was some of the working class "wisdom" I heard from fellow workers at the US Postal Service. Yes, the United States Postal Service the oldest socialist civilian function of the United States government.

And how many of you radicals ever had a beer with your buddies at the bar just a few blocks down from the local Bridgestone-Firestone tire plant where a ersatz Confederate flag is prominently on display and the "N" word is bantered about in all its original racist glory?

And how many of you radicals ever delivered food stamps to a poor, white family with yard signs for some of the most virulent reactionary Republican candidates for public office because they love babies and abortion and homosexuality is a sin?

And I'll bet plenty of you have stood a military base gates with your anti-war signs as truckloads of soldiers and marines are sent off on deployment and death in senseless, pointless wars. And those poor deluded, brainwashed assholes are pointing and laughing at you radicals and some wag in uniform says, "We fight and die so you dummies can act like fools."

That's the thanks you get from the fine, upstanding members of the All Volunteer Force.

And whenever I broach the subject, [snip of inappropriate comments] you "radicals" always tell me, "No, no, no, we don't do violence."

So go on, don't vote, vote for some long-shot, spoiler Green or socialist. Your shit don't stink. Go on, sell out the good guys like Dennis Kucinich or a Russ Feingold. That'll teach those Democrats a lesson.

And if in the near future you know of a friend or family member who loses his/her job or who loses his/her house to foreclosure tell 'em, tell 'em you voted Green or socialist or didn't vote at all because you're not a sell-out and your shit don't stink.

I really appreciated this post. The cusswords really spoke to me, I have to say. I am extremely pissed off. I don't know if I have an analysis, I just have raw hatred for the Democrats right now. I think that they are just there to sometimes raise people's hopes and then channel them back into the system and then do the exact same thing the Republicans do, somehow persuading many many people that all of this horror is inevitable.

I guess my analysis is that anger is sometimes useful. It was good to read something that brought my anger to the surface. It will fuel me to work hard in everything I do.

90% in agreement. the 10% i don't agree with is "their diplomats, Israeli allies and war-planners target Iran". Iran's Mullah's are America's best partner in the Middle East. look beyound the rheatoric and see what is actually happening on the ground in occupied iraq and afghanestan: Iran is providing tremendous services to the occupation through its militias. In fact, it is a complete partner to this occupation. Of the 1.5 Million iraquis murdered since the invasion, 1 Million were murdered during Maliki's tenure who is jopintly an american and an iranian stooge (more so an iranian).

"I would rather vote for what I want and not get it than vote for what I don't want and get it."
Eugene V. Debs


Folks, If you go vote today, think!

Is either party going to serve the interests of working people? Will they stop the wars, create living wage jobs or do /anything/ to stop the cutbacks, the ICE raids? If possible, vote socialist. Write them in if you have to. It's time for the so-called left and the unions to stop tailing the Democrats and build a working class party <a href="/http://www.socialistaction.org/pollack43.htm">http://www.socialistaction.org/pollack43.htm" rel="nofollow">http://www.socialistaction.org/pollack43.htm">http://www.socialistaction.org/pollack43.htm</a>

That said, our real power is in the streets and not at the ballot box. I have no illusions that voting will change a thing.

Nando's post is right on, but where do we as a left go from here? Thanks for speaking the truth and for facing reality.

<blockquote>"To face reality squarely; not to seek the line of least resistance; to call things by their right names; to speak the truth to the masses, no matter how bitter it may be; not to fear obstacles; to be true in little things as in big ones; to base one's programme on the logic of the class struggle; to be bold when the hour for action arrives..."
Leon Trotsky</blockquote>

Whoa - I read this and though it was a joke article. Now I find not only is this whack-job serious, he has backers. Complain that Obama is not original if you wish (he mostly is just cleaning up the mess left after we had a president who wasn't housebroken), but to claim that these issues are spawned by him. I may not like him a lot - but I don't think frothing-at-the-mouth rantings full of half-truths and transparent posturing is a great way to provide a couterpoint....

Insist Obama &amp; Romney Debate 3rd Party Opponents
http://youtu.be/nCZuasjnXOA

Top 3 Dumb Excuses To Not Vote 3rd Party
http://youtu.be/lKxrNPmMkkk

6 Easy Steps To End The 2-Party System
http://youtu.be/AS8cdu9ge0w

100 Ways Mitt Romney Is Just Like Barack Obama.
http://ivn.us/2012/07/17/100-ways-mitt-romney-is-just-like-barack-obama/

2012 US Elections: Obamney vs. Rombama
(NOTE: I strongly disagree with this authors conclusion to not vote when there are alternative party options).
http://www.infowars.com/2012-us-elections-obamney-vs-rombama/

Bush, Obama, Same Old Drama!
http://stpeteforpeace.org/obama.html

Obama the Conservative.
http://www.obamatheconservative.com

Obama 2012: The Lesser Evil?
http://www.prx.org/pieces/78999-obama-2012-the-lesser-evil">http://www.prx.org/pieces/78999-obama-2012-the-lesser-evil#description

Mitt Romney: Champion of Big Government.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig4/howell5.html

Veep Pick Paul Ryan Is No Conservative.
http://thenewamerican.com/usnews/politics/item/12432-veep-pick-paul-ryan-is-no-conservative

Paul Ryan: More Of The Same.
http://chuckbaldwinlive.com/home/archives/5057

Obama 2012: The Lesser Evil?
http://www.prx.org/pieces/78999-obama-2012-the-lesser-evil">http://www.prx.org/pieces/78999-obama-2012-the-lesser-evil#description

ET Spoon - Basically your argument boils down to the fact that because segments of the working-class are reactionary, the working-class are all hopeless subhuman scum and deserve to be ruled like dogs by liberal imperialists. Touching.

ET Spoon, we shouldn't vote for the Democrats not because they're just like the Republicans but to send a message. For my election decision, I've chosen to either A) Vote for no one or B) Vote for a left party opposite the Democrats (and the Republicans).

And no, I'm not under any illusions that simply voting or not voting will create some sort of explosive revolutionary movement amongst the working class and/or the popular masses.

A movement has to be built first.

I'm just as sick as everyone else of being told off for my beliefs (friends, family, etc.), harassed, treated like I don't know any better, etc.

Some I know are under the illusion that believers in communism are "idealistic", as apparently communism (founded by the "idealistic" Karl Marx) is an "idealistic system" where everyone is the same.

Bull Crap.

I've figured out that if you want to change things then you got to actually go out and change them. Do we on the left really expect to sit back and uselessly argue it out as "Joe" the Republican and/or Democrat stays what he is-a left/right "moderate?" Or do we want to build a unified movement that can convince Joe and many others that our message isn't all bad?

But no we can't actually trust the workers, they're all just Confederate-flag waving sociopaths who join the army and mooch off food stamps.

Instead we should just trust in the sound leadership of Barack Obama to provide the workers with their bread crumbs and toilet water, which is more than they deserve.

Bitchin' column, folks. That's what I say. I have had enough of this horse shit.

Too much ultra-left absolutism/extremism in this post.. First, the Democrats are not completely evil. They suport gay rights and women's rights, Social Security and Medicare, and other programs that working people support. Their support is incomplete and is designed to get the workers to support capitalism, but if that's all the working class can get, well, it's better than nothing if they want to survive. If we oppose the Democratic Party absolutely, we may find ourselves opposing what the workers want. Just like if we oppose labor unions because of the widespread corruption and opportunism in them.
Second, there is no possibility of a socialist revolution in the near future, so we have to work for it over the long haul. Working people are not interested in utopian Marxist theory; they want to know specifically how to get a better life for themselves, their families, and everybody. How are we going to reach them with our message? They don't believe the socialist promises anymore than they believe the crap the capitalists tell them. The experience of the Soviet Union and Communist China is still a heavy rock tied around our necks. That and the experience of "real-existing capitalism" has led to a cynicism about all ideologies. And I think that's a good thing. We need to pay more attention to how things work in reality, and not be seduced by how beautiful our theories sound. Put bluntly, there's way too much bullshit theorizing and political wordmongering on kasama, and not enough discussion of what we want and how are we going to get it. Sometimes we forget that theory comes from practice,and has to be continually tested and modified by practice.
I'd like to hear how communists have worked with other people that they have big differences with, but also something in common with. I've had some interesting experiences along that line myself. How do you do anti-war work with religious people who think abortion is murder, and don't want to work with you? How do you work with workers fighting for their rights, but who don't trust you and think socialism means police oppression and gulags? How do you work with small capitalists who are opposed to the imperialism of the big capitalists but still beleive in the nyth of the "free market system"? Etc., etc.. If we can discuss things like that in detail (not theory), we will learn how to work with some people who support the Democrats, and reach a lot more people with our ideas. We'll also learn how to recognize when our differences really prevent us from working with certain other people.
If we ever get to the stage of a workers' state, you'll find that the workers have a lot of serious divisions and conflicts of interest among them. workers may be united by some things, but divided on others. How are communists going to deal with that? Our record in the Soviet Union is not one to be proud of in that respect.