It's the Democratic Socialists of America. They are certainly social
democrats. I used to work with them in the West Virginia Citizen's
Action Group. They have no interest in working with revolutionary
socialists unless it is only by happenstance in a coalition. They
function as a faction of the Democrat party. In fact, they are even more
open about functioning as a faction of the Democrat party than the
Communist Party is. The CP would deny that, but as long as they don't
field their own candidates and endorse whatever Democrat is running that
is what they are essentially doing. The DSA actually run their own
candidates as Democrats when they can resist just endorsing which ever
other Democrat who might file before they get a chance. The Socialist
Party are social democrats too, but at least they operate separately
from the Democrats.
On 8/4/2017 1:49 PM, Miriam Vieni wrote:
I've just been listening to an emotionally and intellectually exhausting Dig
podcast. I think that Jacobin, to which the podcast belongs, is connected
with SDA. Anyway, SDA is about to have a state convention and I was
listening to a dialogue between two candidates for their assembly, I think.
I suppose that my first problem is that these are young people who tend to
talk an a totally different idiom from what I'm accustomed to. I mean I've
certainly been hearing thoughts expressed in this language, but it tends to
be way out there somewhere, very esoteric. My second problem was that the
male candidate, in his attempt to be highly intellectual and to talk in the
most complex terms about how issues are related and, therefore, have to be
addressed, was less than concrete in explaining how to achieve his goals. My
third problem was, (and I admit that ai didn't listen to the entire podcast
because it made me weary), was that in all the talk about how to properly
organize this little tiny party, there was no discussion about joining up
with other socialist parties plus the Greens plus all those revolutionary
Democrats. I really believe that if people stopped being so sectarian and
stopped derogating everyone who didn't agree with every one of their points,
maybe, just maybe, we'd have a chance of beating back all that corporate
wealth and power.
Miriam