It’s an election year, so we leftists have a sworn duty to reignite, for the 10,000th time, the debate about “lesser-evil voting.” In accord with my self-identification as #1 Fan of the Great Man, I want to defend the Chomskyan point of view.
Category: Electoral Politics
Building the Party Through Struggle: A Response to French and Gong
A new working-class party will be built primarily through mass struggles like the current uprising and the strikes and workplace demonstrations that took place amidst the pandemic, and through running candidates locally on independent ballot lines.
Trump Rallies for Reopening as Biden Strengthens His Position
Donald Trump held his first campaign rally in months on June 20 in an indoor arena in Tulsa, Oklahoma where speaking to a smaller than expected crowd of only 13,000 he minimized the seriousness of the coronavirus pandemic still spreading across the country and failed to address the police racism and violence that have led to protests by hundreds of thousands.
Tail Can’t Wag the Dog: The DSA NPC Vote on Swing States and The Questions for Democracy
The DSA National Political Committee report posted on 5/4/20 showed an alarming question that had come to a vote: “Should DSA ask members in swing states to consider voting for Biden?”
“Dirty Break” for Independent Political Action or a Way to Stay Stuck in the Mud?
Does the history of Minnesota’s Farm-Labor Party in the 1920s and 1930s hold any lessons for socialists today? Kim Moody responds to an article by Eric Blanc.
Trump, Sanders, and the Crisis of Neoliberalism (Part Two)
The fundamental contradiction for many socialists when considering Bernie’s candidacy is simple. He ran as a socialist (or at least a social democrat) within a capitalist party.
Trump, Sanders, and the Crisis of Neoliberalism (Part One)
We continue to live in the shadow of the Great Recession of 2008. The protracted and partial economic recovery has led to a political and ideological crisis of neoliberalism.
Trump Forever? He May Try
In the midst of the worst pandemic in U.S. history and what may be a Second Great Depression worse than the first, President Donald J. Trump’s chief concern is reelection to the presidency in November.
Debating Green Electoral Strategy
“We’ll definitely have more leverage over Biden, if we get a substantial vote, than over Trump, no doubt about that. But look, whoever’s in there, we got to have mass movements that aren’t tied to either party.”
Still Facing Reality: A Reply to Our Critics
Ashley Smith and Charles Post respond to criticisms of their article “Facing Reality: The Socialist Left, the Sanders Campaign and Our Future.”
A Therapist’s Perspective On Rape, Trauma, Tara Reade, and Credibility
A psychotherapist and expert witness in the field of rape and sexual abuse responds to Michael Stern’s doubts about Reade.
Wading Through Contradictions
The Democratic Party is a capitalist party, it cannot be reformed, and we do need a new party. But that understanding alone does not help us to navigate the troubled waters of politics in the United States.
The Sanders Campaign: A Balance Sheet and the Way Forward
On April 8, Bernie Sanders ended his presidential campaign, but said that the movement around him must continue. Then on April 13, he went “all in” for Joe Biden, endorsing Biden’s candidacy and setting up joint policy committees linking the . . .
Trump Puts Business before Health as Country Reopens
President Donald Trump has now announced a three-phase plan for reopening the country, though many medical experts have expressed doubts and 81 percent of Americans believe we should not reopen until it is safe to do so. Putting profits ahead of people, Trump puts the entire country at risk.
Bernie, Biden, and Hegemony
The struggle against capital has not been defeated, just because Sanders was unsuccessful in his bid for the presidency. Instead, what we’re witnessing is more and more people becoming engaged with the notion of worker struggle.
In Defense of Bhaskar Sunkara of Jacobin
Peter Dreier’s vicious attack on Bhaskar Sunkara in The Nation is an embarrassment to that publication. The Nation editors should be ashamed of having allowed Dreier to lambast the editor of Jacobin in such a venomous piece because Sunkara said he would vote for presidential candidate . . .
Left Politics after Sanders: Think Internationally, Historically and Dialectically
Not many leftists need convincing that Biden is uninspiring; but you can’t effectively fight this year’s lesser evil with some misty vision of a better political alternative in some indefinite future.
Unity in Israel Means New Low for Palestinians
Any hope of a far-off, mythical two-state solution is scheduled to vanish on July 1st with the annexation of an unspecified amount of settled Palestinian land. When that happens, the terms that have defined the last 50 years of negotiations in Israel/Palestine will have been officially overturned.
Thanks, Bernie!
I suggest closing your eyes and visualizing what U.S. politics would have looked like if Bernie Sanders had not launched his campaigns for President.
The Curious Case of the “Democratic Road to Socialism” That Wasn’t There
In an article last year (“Marxism, the Democratic Republic, and the Undemocratic U. S. Constitution,” New Politics, 7/30/2019) I argued that there are major political and historical blind spots and inconsistencies in current debates over socialist strategy. The main inconsistency . . .
Thinking Out Loud about the End of Social Democracy
The Sanders challenge is over and the question for socialists is, where do we go from here? Up until recently this debate has ranged along familiar lines: the need for independent political action and the obstacles socialists face in recruiting . . .
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