A survey of America's small tent socialist parties reveals that even one of their own cannot count on unanimous supporthttp://observer.com/2015/09/will-socialists-back-bernie-definitely-maybe/by Ari Paul
September 2, 2015
The surge of democratic socialist Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont in the Democratic primaries will test whether Americans really can identify with an ideology often considered taboo. Less talked about is whether the Sanders campaign will inspire the socialists who have made headlines from the WTO in Seattle to Occupy Wall Street to trade in their agitation for campaign pins. A survey of the landscape yields the challenges for America’s left, even when one its own is being considered as a presidential nominee for the Democratic Party.
(excerpted. Paul's survey includes: Democratic Socialists of America, Socialist Alternative, International Socialists of America [Trotsky/Lenin], Revolutionary Communists of America [Mao], International Communist League, Communist Party of the United States, and Socialist Workers Party. For the full assessments of each, see the article.)
What to take from this? The sad reality, of course, is that this is another episode of the left being its own worst enemy, with groups falling for the narcissism of small differences, as portrayed in the famous “People’s Front of Judah” bit from Life of Brian or Joan Didion’s description in Slouching Towards Bethlehem of CP-USA founder Michael Laski, whose love of an ordered world made his political faction not just small but averse to the chaos necessary for actual social change. It’s that tendency that inspired Ms. Sawant to ask socialists to realize that they have more in common with each other than they have differences, and that a big tent movement would change that hoary image, seeming more like a national movement than a collection of fringe groups. Read more at:
http://tr.im/kMNZc
