Below is a comment I made to someone who argued that “although elections are important, the mass movement is more important.”
This is a very poor way to frame things at this moment, or any moment for that matter. Don’t elections have a mass character, don’t they draw into them some of the main class and social movements without whom the country will never move to higher ground; and don’t they – and especially their outcome – create more or less favorable conditions for struggle on a broad range of issues. I have to think that the electoral and political arena will figure prominently in any kind of swing of the country to the left in the future – much like it did in Latin America. Damming electoral/legislative struggle with faint praise is no sign of political maturity nor a measure of one’s radicalism.
Written by
Sam Webb
I'm a long-time socialist and activist, but new to the blogging world. I hope to bring a different perspective on politics, sports, culture, and Marxism. Besides blogging, I also leave plenty of time for swimming, hiking, ESPN, music, reading, drinking good beer, and, not least, my family and friends. I wish I could play basketball, but my knees ruled out that possibility long ago.
While I currently reside in New York, my politically formative years were spent in Portland, Me. and Detroit during the 1970s and 1980s. I graduated from St. Francis Xavier University in Nova Scotia (where I played basketball) and received a MA in economics from the University of Connecticut.
I was the national chairperson of the Communist Party, USA from 2000 until 2014 when I stepped down at the convention. In 2016 I resigned from the Communist Party two years later. We were no longer on the same page.
