During the 2006 election, I was criticized by a small group of confused and self-important leftists (namely Louis Proyect and Gilles d'Aymery) because I actively supported the Democratic party. They argued that no self-respecting Marxist would do such a thing, and then they excommunicated me - Proyect kicked me off his tightly-regulated/heavily-censored discussion group (Marxmail) and d'Aymery commissioned an "artist" to draw a primitive and juvenile cartoon attempting to ridicule me (posted at d'Aymery's Swans web site - see cartoon below).
My point was simply that capitalism was not on the ballot in November 2006 - the Iraq occupation, among other things, was - and voting for a third party candidate would only function to increase the likelihood of Republican control of the US government and continue the occupation at the cost of many more thousands of lives and further destabilization of the Middle East for the benefit of Israel and Western energy corporations. Proyect and d'Aymery acted as if they really believe that voting in a bourgeois democracy is a mechanism for resisting capitalism.
Compare the Proyect-d'Aymery position to that of Marx's enthusiastic support of the Republican Party during the US civil war. "We congratulate the American people upon your re-election by a large majority," Marx wrote to Lincoln on January 28, 1865. "If resistance to the Slave Power was the reserved watchword of your first election, the triumphant war cry of your re-election is Death to Slavery." He concluded the letter with powerful words:
Cartoon posted on the Swans web site. I am the Revolutionary for Democrats seated at the table. Evidently "true revolutionaries" have beer guts and wear their baseball caps backwards (there's a metaphor in there somewhere).
So did overthrowing the Republican majority in Congress have an impact? Yes, in fact, it did. Not only did it change the debate, but, last night, the Senate held an all-night debate on an amendment, sponsored by Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (of Michigan) and Senator Jack Reed (of Rhode Island) that would require the Bush administration to begin withdrawing troops from Iraq in 120 days and finally start the process of bringing an end to death and destruction of Arab countries. The Republicans rallied around their president and, chanting the magical spell of Petraeus, successfully blocked the amendment. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (of Nevada) then pulled the larger bill (part of which planned to enlarge the size of the Army and the Marines) from consideration. Republicans predictably began accusing Democrats of abandoning the troops in Iraq.
Movement on the Iraq occupation was why I voted for Democrats in November 2006. I realized that marking a ballot for a third party candidate in my home state of Wisconsin is not a revolutionary act. It would have done nothing to advance the interests of the working class. That revolutionary work occurs throughout the two years between elections. In November, progressive Americans had a clear choice: either they could vote for Democrats and then pressure them to pressure the Republicans to bring an end to death and mayhem; or they could vote for a third party candidate and increase the chance that Republicans would continue to control Congress and continue the horrors of the Iraq occupation. In such a situation, the idealism of "vote your preference" has no place. The vote has to be strategic and it must be consistent with the real character of your conscience. In other words, it boils down to a basic question: Do you believe that sticking it to Democrats and protesting the two-party system is more important than saving lives in Iraq? My answer in November 2006 was save Iraqi lives. I don't regret that decision. And, although Democrats failed in last night's bid to do something dramatic, they tried and promise to try again, and that's what I wanted. Before 2006 only one senator pushed to get us out of Iraq. Now 52 senators are pushing for it. That is a hell of a change.
Note: d'Aymery was so upset after I e-mailed him and asked him why he refers to his followers as the "flock" that he reposted my e-mail and manufactured a spelling error so he could put a "[sic]" behind it to make it appear as if I had made the error! I presume this was his way of sticking it to the professor. Evidently pettiness goes hand-in-hand with idiotic leftism (d'Aymery's term, not mine).
My point was simply that capitalism was not on the ballot in November 2006 - the Iraq occupation, among other things, was - and voting for a third party candidate would only function to increase the likelihood of Republican control of the US government and continue the occupation at the cost of many more thousands of lives and further destabilization of the Middle East for the benefit of Israel and Western energy corporations. Proyect and d'Aymery acted as if they really believe that voting in a bourgeois democracy is a mechanism for resisting capitalism.
Compare the Proyect-d'Aymery position to that of Marx's enthusiastic support of the Republican Party during the US civil war. "We congratulate the American people upon your re-election by a large majority," Marx wrote to Lincoln on January 28, 1865. "If resistance to the Slave Power was the reserved watchword of your first election, the triumphant war cry of your re-election is Death to Slavery." He concluded the letter with powerful words:
The workingmen of Europe feel sure that, as the American War of Independence initiated a new era of ascendancy for the middle class, so the American Antislavery War will do for the working classes. They consider it an earnest of the epoch to come that it fell to the lot of Abraham Lincoln, the single-minded son of the working class, to lead his country through the matchless struggle for the rescue of an enchained race and the reconstruction of a social world.In Marx's words you will find a non-ideological instance of politically-intelligent revolutionary practice. In Proyect and d'Aymery efforts you will find a superficial Marxism, one that makes it all the more easier to understand why Marx once remarked, "I am not a Marxist." To paraphrase Engles, the shallow Marxist is a dangerous friend who, unfortunately, the materialist conception of history has a lot of nowadays.
Cartoon posted on the Swans web site. I am the Revolutionary for Democrats seated at the table. Evidently "true revolutionaries" have beer guts and wear their baseball caps backwards (there's a metaphor in there somewhere).
So did overthrowing the Republican majority in Congress have an impact? Yes, in fact, it did. Not only did it change the debate, but, last night, the Senate held an all-night debate on an amendment, sponsored by Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (of Michigan) and Senator Jack Reed (of Rhode Island) that would require the Bush administration to begin withdrawing troops from Iraq in 120 days and finally start the process of bringing an end to death and destruction of Arab countries. The Republicans rallied around their president and, chanting the magical spell of Petraeus, successfully blocked the amendment. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (of Nevada) then pulled the larger bill (part of which planned to enlarge the size of the Army and the Marines) from consideration. Republicans predictably began accusing Democrats of abandoning the troops in Iraq.
Movement on the Iraq occupation was why I voted for Democrats in November 2006. I realized that marking a ballot for a third party candidate in my home state of Wisconsin is not a revolutionary act. It would have done nothing to advance the interests of the working class. That revolutionary work occurs throughout the two years between elections. In November, progressive Americans had a clear choice: either they could vote for Democrats and then pressure them to pressure the Republicans to bring an end to death and mayhem; or they could vote for a third party candidate and increase the chance that Republicans would continue to control Congress and continue the horrors of the Iraq occupation. In such a situation, the idealism of "vote your preference" has no place. The vote has to be strategic and it must be consistent with the real character of your conscience. In other words, it boils down to a basic question: Do you believe that sticking it to Democrats and protesting the two-party system is more important than saving lives in Iraq? My answer in November 2006 was save Iraqi lives. I don't regret that decision. And, although Democrats failed in last night's bid to do something dramatic, they tried and promise to try again, and that's what I wanted. Before 2006 only one senator pushed to get us out of Iraq. Now 52 senators are pushing for it. That is a hell of a change.
Note: d'Aymery was so upset after I e-mailed him and asked him why he refers to his followers as the "flock" that he reposted my e-mail and manufactured a spelling error so he could put a "[sic]" behind it to make it appear as if I had made the error! I presume this was his way of sticking it to the professor. Evidently pettiness goes hand-in-hand with idiotic leftism (d'Aymery's term, not mine).
1 comments:
from jean paul sartre's play Les Mains sales:
[a reaction to horror expressed by a "pure" communist at the thought of building a coalition with bourgeois factions]
"How frightened you are of soiling your hands. All right, stay pure! Who does it help, and why did you come to us? Purity is an ideal for a fakir or a monk. You intellectuals, you bourgeois anarchists, you use it as an excuse for doing nothing. Do nothing, stay put, keep your elbows to your sides, wear kid gloves. My hands are filthy. I've dipped them up to the elbows in blood and shit. So what? Do you think you can govern and keep your spirit white?"
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