Links and Stuff

As I mentioned in a previous post, one of the things I miss most about being away from the US is the opportunity for involvement in social issues. Every once and a while I’ll get the urge to try and seek something out in Japan.

I was thinking that since I’m very close to a major city now (Nagoya), perhaps I could find some sort of opportunity. I spent an afternoon searching the internet to that effect, with no great success. I suppose in Japan, as in the US, it is hard to get involved locally by using the internet. It’s probably much better to make use of the connections you already have.

I did find a number of links to sites that deal with progressive politics in Japan. None of them offer an real opportunities for involvement locally, but for what it was worth I thought I would just add them to my list of links in case anyone else was interested in exploring them (you can find them on the bottom of the links on the left hand side of this page.)

You may notice that I’ve decided to include the party of bourgeois capitalism with Democrats Abroad in Japan. I should probably take a moment to defend this.

My freshman year at Calvin College I joined the Young Democrats club. The club wasn’t very well organized, and didn’t have very strong leadership, but I enjoyed being in it because it gave me a sense of participation. During the months before the 1996 election, we did simple things like distributing literature, and encouraging people to vote in predominately Democratic (read Black) neighborhoods.

That same year I applied for membership in the Socialist Party. I met with a representative from the Socialist Party, and he inquired as to what political activities I was currently involved in. When I mentioned the young Democrats, he was slightly upset and said that the Democratic Party was a party of capitalism, and it was unacceptable for Socialist Party members to engage in activities that helped the Democratic Party.

I was reluctant to give up my participation in the Young Democrats because it gave me a sense of being involved locally, with my feet on the ground, working and talking with real people. The Socialist Party, on the other hand, offered no opportunities for local involvement. I tried briefly to make this case. I said there wasn’t a strong Socialist presence in Grand Rapids, and in the absence of a Socialist alternative, might it not be better to work for the Democratic party than to let the Republicans win? He wouldn’t give in on this point though, and made it clear to me that my admittance into the Socialist Party would be conditional on my leaving the Young Democrats. So I dropped out of the Calvin College Young Democrats. The organization dissolved the following year anyway, due to lack of interest.

During the 2000 election of course was Ralph Nader. The Socialist Party refused to endorse Ralph Nader because he was a reformist capitalist, and not a true Socialist. They ran their own candidates instead, but they did acknowledge in their newsletter that some Socialist party members might choose on an individual basis to support the candidacy of Ralph Nader.

During the summer of 2000 I went to the protest the Republican National Convention. As I was marching in a demonstration, I overheard some of the conversation behind me, and recognized that the person behind me was David McReynolds. David McReynolds was the Socialist candidate for president that year. Because of his leadership in both the Socialist party, and The War Resisters League, he is well known within certain radical circles.

I had actually corresponded with him over e-mail. Or sort of. I had participated in discussions on the Socialist Party e-mail list serve, and David McReynolds had twice responded to some of my posts, addressing me by my first name as if I was an old friend of his, and praising what I had wrote. I was very impressed with his friendly attitude, and thought maybe I should introduce myself to him in person now that he was right behind me. But then I remembered the Ralph Nader pens that were on my backpack and my shirt, and I thought maybe it wouldn’t be such a good idea.

On that same march I was approached by someone from the Sparticist League. I don’t know too much about that organization, but I believe it is modeled after Rosa Luxembourg’s group in Germany of the same name. Anyway, he was trying to recruit people to join the group, and was handing out literature about that explained the Sparticist position and attacked Ralph Nader as a reformist capitalist. At that point he noticed the Ralph Nader pen on my shirt, and challenged me on it.

“Are you a socialist?” he asked.

“Of course,” I answered.

“Don’t you realize that supporting Ralph Nader is a contradiction with your socialist beliefs?”

I tried to explain that I felt that the candidacy of Ralph Nader had an opportunity to force issues such as 3rd world exploitation, and issues of global capitalism, into the mainstream, and a strong show of support for Ralph Nader could be more valuable than splitting the left’s vote over all the other various socialist candidates.

He maintained that a socialist could never in good conscience vote for a bourgeois candidate. At which point I said “But doesn’t Marxist theory call for occasional strategic alliances with the Bourgeois?”

He replied that I was misinterpreting that theory. “For instance if the Nazis or the Fascists were in power, then we would ally ourselves with whatever liberal bourgeois factions wanted to overthrow Fascism. But that theory does not extend to supporting capitalist candidates during an election.”

During this time a man slightly older than the two of us, probably in his mid 30s, wearing badges identifying himself as a member of the International Socialist Organization, had been listening into our conversation. I was unsure whose side he was going to take. I had a feeling he was on my side, perhaps because I thought I was the one with the better argument. (I always tend to be biased towards my own arguments).

In fact he did take my side. I would find out later that the ISO had officially endorsed Nader’s candidacy during the 2000 election. When I began to run out of things to say, the ISO man jumped in to pick up the argument. “I think what he said was absolutely right,” he said indicating me. “At times we do need to enter into an alliance with bourgeois movements as a way of advancing the issues we care about. We shouldn’t gloss over Nader’s faults, but we should support him, being realistic about his short comings, as a way to force these issues into the mainstream debate.”

The two of them continued the discussion for sometime while I became reduced to the role of an observer. In fact I sort of became the audience that each man was addressing his arguments to and hoping to convert. We stayed in one spot while the rest of the demonstration marched past us. At one point, residents of China town were protesting plans to build a stadium in the midst of their home. They chanted, “No stadium in China town,” and passed the megaphone to whoever was nearby.

When they went past us they handed the megaphone to me, and I did my best to yell out in a clear voice, “No stadium in China town.” Next they gave the megaphone to the Spartacist, who refused to say the chant. The ISO representative jumped on this. “You see? He wouldn’t say it because it’s not radical enough for him. There’s nothing wrong with the message of ‘No Stadium in China Town’. It’s a perfectly good message, but it wasn’t radical enough for him, so he wouldn’t say it.”

In the end all three of us parted with no one having been convinced, but I thought it was an interesting discussion.

It was around this same time that I found I agreed more with the theories of Bakunin then with Marx, and began to self-identify as an Anarchist. And anarchists aren’t supposed to vote at all, and certainly aren’t supposed to vote for Democrats.

So here’s my defense:

I think we need to be realistic about voting, and realistic about its limitations. The bourgeois will never allow themselves to be simply voted out of power, and the revolution will not be achieved at the ballot box. Also we need to be very careful, as Emma Goldman warned, that we do not accept voting as a substitute for civic involvement, and do not accept the illusion that voting gives us more power than it actually does.

All that being said, I think we need to be realistic that the revolution will not come in the near future. And in the meantime we are faced with choice of becoming increasingly irrelevant, or taking the opportunity to participate in politics to the extent available. Although capitalism will never be voted out of power, many other important issues are on the ballot box. Civil rights, reproductive rights, rights for Gays and Lesbians, and minimal restrains on capitalisms excesses are all decided at the ballot box. Or at least can be influenced by election outcomes, with constant pressure from activism being essential. But to disregard the elections completely is to sacrifice many of these issues, and often societies most vulnerable who are affected by their outcome.

Also on the ballot often are civil liberties. There can be no question that civil liberties has dramatically decreased under the current Republican administration, and this effects activism and organization.
The revolution of the Paris Commune was greatly aided by the relaxation of the liberal empire in the years preceding, which allowed radicals to organize and recruit openly.

What happened in the 2000 election has convinced me that there is some value in supporting the lesser of two evil capitalist parties in away to advance some of the issues I care about. Of course the Democrats are currently spineless cowards who are constantly giving into the Republicans, but I believe the way to strengthen the Democrats is to become more involved in the Democratic Party, and work to give it a backbone.

But that’s just my two cents of course. I welcome anyone who wants to challenge me on this.