Some questions

Submitted by martin on 22 April, 2021 - 9:01 Author: Duncan Morrison
Debate

Part of an ongoing debate on the USA. Click here to read all the contributions


It has come to that point of the debate when Martin files off the sharp edges of the arguments and dodges the key questions in his aim to get his propositions passed.

Simple questions:

1) What makes a candidate viable? Martin asserts that WOSA in South Africa and the Labour Party on the Isle of Wight both were but gives us no criteria upon which to begin to make an assessment.

2) What should socialists argue for and educate DSA members about the Democrats? (The DSA is not the Democrats and does not just uncritically orientate to the Democrats). Martin again asserts that we should orientate to the DSA. I don't think anyone disputes that. Martin says 'Many people have joined the DSA to fight the Democrats, rather than passively accepting the Democrats as a fact of life'. But draws no conclusions. The latest argument on the DSA is full of what Martin says he isn't proposing. The question is what is he proposing?

3) What makes a situation pressing enough to call for a vote for a bourgeois candidate? Again Martin is sure that the USA 2020 election was pressing but says little beyond that. With the limited criterion Martin argues there are likely to be lots of 'pressing' situations in the current epoch.

The current debate is about USA 2020 but it will set precedents. If we accept Martin's arguments, we risk falling into an all encompassing new approach on the basis of poorly defined, negative assessments. We should not do that.

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