Commie President

[comrade_mufasa]

Are there any communist or hard lined socilist running for president.

[Intifada]

John Kerry.

[BOZG]

He asked for communists or hardline socialists, not for right-wingers.

[YKTMX]

There are a few minor left parties running for President. Campaigns are good vehicles for spreading radical ideas to people but it wouldn't matter if Marx was president, it would still be pointless.

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

There are minor left-wing candidates for President, but eating yr ballot is really a more effective protest of bourgeoisie pseudo-democracy than voting for yr favorite bureaucrat (Who has no chance of winning, even if they could get the the votes :P) to be commander and cheif of the capitalist state.

[Severian]

These are the Socialist Workers Party candidates for president and VP (http://www.themilitant.com/2004/6825/682555.html)

Links to more info on their campaign (http://www.themilitant.com/2004/campaign/campaign01.html)

They're communists, and are running in order to promote communist ideas and to speak out in support of strikes and non-electoral struggles by working people. As YouKnowTheyMurderedX says it's a good vehicle, you can reach a lot of people and even break into the bourgeois media a bit which is hard to do other ways.

Workers World and maybe some other groups are also running campaigns.

[Michael De Panama]

Here's your Socialist Party candidate:
http://www.waltbrownforpresident.org/

Here's your Socialist Equality Party candidate:
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/jan2004/stat-j27.shtml

[T_SP]

Ralph Nader, is probably the forerunner as an alternative to Bush or Kerry. I'm not saying I completely support him though. ;)

[BOZG]

Originally posted by [email protected] 13 2004, 07:01 PM
Ralph Nader, is probably the forerunner as an alternative to Bush or Kerry. I'm not saying I completely support him though. ;)
In reality, it's not that Nader represents a real alternative or a break from capitalism but that the people who support him could lay the basis for creating an organisation independent of the mainstream parties and offer a breathing space for socialist ideas to be made.

[Xvall]

Yes. I'm under the impression that it would be a lot easier to spread socialistic ideals in Nader's America than it would be in Bush's or Kerry's.

[Latin America]

Let me ask you this guys: If you guys had to vote for one of the US presidential candidates who would you vote for?

[Anti-Capitalist1]

No offense, but Nader will win before any of these guys.

[h&s]

Let me ask you this guys: If you guys had to vote for one of the US presidential candidates who would you vote for?
We would vote for :hammer:, scibbled all over the ballot paper!
Do you really think you can differentiate between the two? The only difference is their IQ's.
Spoiling the paper would be the only thing to do.

[Severian]

Originally posted by Anti-[email protected] 14 2004, 08:30 PM
No offense, but Nader will win before any of these guys.
In fact, Nader doesn't have any chance of winning either, and knows it.

If you agree with Nader's middle-class, economic nationalist program, it would make sense to support his campaign as a means of spreading those ideas.

Or if you share his hope of forcing the Democratic Party to shift slightly left in order to avoid losing votes to Nader....

Otherwise, no.


In reality, it's not that Nader represents a real alternative or a break from capitalism but that the people who support him could lay the basis for creating an organisation independent of the mainstream parties and offer a breathing space for socialist ideas to be made.

Fortunately, he's not laying the basis of any such organization since he's running as an independent - his supporters will disperse after the election is over.

I say fortunately because there's nothing positive about having yet another capitalist party. "Independent of the mainstream parties"? You could say the same of Perot or Buchanan.

[BOZG]

Why don't you read the rest of the sentence?

[Daymare17]

Revolutionaries running for President is only a waste of time. The next level of organisation for the American working class is obviously a labor party based on the unions, like in the UK. Revolutionaries must call for such a party and participate in the building of it, while at the same time promoting pure Marxist ideas. The next stage in American workers' consciousness is not socialist insurrection, but simply the forming of a party. As Engels said when UK Labour was formed:

"The first great step, of importance for every country newly entering into the movement, is always the constitution of the workers as an independent political party, no matter how, so long as it is a distinct workers' party…The masses must have the time and opportunity to develop, and they can have the opportunity only when they have a movement of their own – no matter in what form so long as it is their own movement – in which they are driven further by their own mistakes and learn to profit by them...The great thing is to get the working class to move as a class; that once obtained, they will soon find the right direction…", continued Engels. All those who failed to understand this "will be left out in the cold with small sects of their own."

From http://www.marxist.com/hbtu/chapter7.html

We'll tell the radicalised workers: "We think that the problems of America can only be solved by the nationalisation of the economy under democratic control. But you are still not won over to this position. You are for the creation of a working class party to try and represent the workers inside the institutions of capitalism. Fine. So long as we are a minority, we must act like one. If that is what you want, then we will help you build such a party, while still proclaiming the need for revolution."

Here is the statement of the Workers International League on the US elections and the need for a mass labor party. http://www.socialistappeal.org/documents/u...4_part_iii.html (http://www.socialistappeal.org/documents/us_perspectives_2004_part_iii.html)

[Subversive Rob]

Because the British Labour Party is ever so radical today...

[ZeroPain]

Personaly i hope bush wins, things have to get alot worse to get alittle better.

[Severian]

Originally posted by [email protected] 16 2004, 01:13 AM
Revolutionaries running for President is only a waste of time. The next level of organisation for the American working class is obviously a labor party based on the unions, like in the UK.
Fine. In fact the SWP's candidates did call for a labor party based on the unions.

The AFL-CIO will not be agreeing to launch a labor party this year, however. So what position do we take on elections in the meantime? People ask, y'know.

Bourgeois politics is too big to be simply ignored; it must be answered or opposed or you tend to get sucked into it.