Reply From The Socialist Party of the USA

I find this funny. In my previous county (Bergen) two Democratic party
"members" were arrested for forging resignation letters of county committee
members so the committee could nominate a candidate of the county chair. The
organizations actually locked out party "members" when they nominated a
replacement for a Freeholder (county legislature) candidate that moved on to
another position. In my state county parties run everything and seem to work
hardest to exclude participation of members. Probably why a majority of the
voters in NJ are registered as "unaffiliated". But the idea that the DP is not
an organized Party is a joke. They are a machine that runs most everythign with
Party chairs (at least out here) who regularly go from chair to prison. I agree
it is not democratic, but it is a "Party" and a waste of time to try to take
over, unless you like being harassed or arrested regularly.

Greg


Greg is referring, in this post, to a long piece from Gabe Ross.

This is a matter where "everyone is right". In some ways the links between the Democratic Party and those who run the country is similar to that very strange situation in the former Soviet Union where you had two parallel structures, one being the Communist Party and the other, entirely separate, the structure of the Soviet State. It didn't really matter who held the formal positions in the Soviet State - it only mattered who held the key posts in the Soviet
Communist Party.

Gabe's original post followed, more or less, the positions of the late Michael Harrington, which had a lot of sense to them - but they were positions which I felt Mike himself never carried to their logical conclusion - ie., why didn't Mike run in the New Hampshire Democratic Primary? He would have lost, but he was a very
good speaker, he could have put socialism on the political map by that direct intervention. But his general position on the Democratic Party remained untested.

One place where it was tried was Illinois, where the cult of the Larouche folks actually captured the nomination for (I think) the post of Governor on the Democratic Party line, and the Democratic Party had to run its candidate as an independent. But this was a very brief aberration- while it cost the Democrats that election, the Larouche folks long since were moved out of the Illinois party.

Gabe Ross led an interesting split out of the Socialist Party, but not a very important one. What is more important to me than his position on the Democratic Party are his positions on foreign policy questions such as the Iraq War, or the Middle East. Positions held by many Democrats on the right wing of the party.

Peace,
David McReynolds

This is correct, except the words "interesting" and "important" are
transposed. There was little of interest in Gabe and his crew leaving
the party. It was important, however, in that he took some of the
worst social democratic elements with him. He made the SPUSA a much
better part for taking them and himself out.

Too bad we didn't know Gabe was a member of the Democratic Party all
along. We could have spared ourselves some trouble by expelling him 35
years ago.

Oh, who the fuck cares that one of their people was elected as a
Democrat, for a borough of a small town (less than 9,000 pop.). How
many people have they run for Congress? How many for governor? How
many for President? We reach thousands more people with our socialist
message than will ever know that a social democrat was even elected to
some tiny suburb near Pittsburgh.

chegitz guevara