Date: Wed, 24 Jul 1996 18:13:39 -0700 (PDT)
From: "James F. Miller" <jamiller-AT-igc.apc.org>
Subject: Bourgeois politics


1996 ELECTIONS

   A while ago I posted an article from the (U.S.)
Militant excoriating the CPUSA for endorsing Clinton.
Louis P. responded to a part of the article which dealt
with lesser-evilism in bourgeois electoral politics:

>Louis: Oh yeah, you forgot about one other Communist who supports
>bourgeois candidates: Fidel Castro. He was an avid supporter of Jesse
>Jackson. This whole question of electoral politics is a very important
>one, but the problem with the SWP is that tars everything with the
>petty-bourgeois brush. It would be interesting to hear worker-Bolshevik
>Jim Miller provide an Marxist analysis of the Green Party and the Nader
>candidacy. Don't hold your breath.


   I don't recall the circumstances of Castro's support for
Jesse Jackson, but I don't doubt that Louis is accurate in
calling attention to this support (but I don't know how
"avid" it was).
   I don't know why Louis points this out, except perhaps to
indicate that communists can sometimes justifiably support
candidates who remain within the framework of the two parties
of big business in the U.S. Here I would disagree with Louis
and with Castro as well.
   As far as Nader and the Greens are concerned, they are
bourgeois liberal groups. The working class needs to move
away from capitalist politics altogether, although the exact
form this will take in the future remains to be determined.
   What is of central importance for the development of
working class political consciousness is its own activity.
It needs to feel itself becoming a social and political
power in society. For this it needs some organizational
expression. We don't have this yet. The time is not yet
ripe for this development, but it may come soon.
   In the meantime, bourgeois liberals like Nader have
nothing to offer the working class but illusions that
somehow the critical problems facing humanity can be
solved within the framework of the dictatorship of
capital.


Jim Miller
Seattle
jamiller-AT-igc.apc.org


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