Wednesday, July 13, 2016

The legacy of the Progressive Party.

Writing in a formerly left-wing revolutionary Marxist working class publication, the People's World---now, unfortunately gone bad and a cheerleader for the Democratic Party, a writer after telling about the Progressive Party holding its convention in Philadelphia like the Democrats will be doing soon... concludes his article with this falsification and outright lie:


"...Many of the goals of the Progressive Party, therefore, remain unfilled to this day. Rising anger against the decline in working class living standards has reached its greatest level in the 2016 election. Progressives, such as the Bernie Sanders delegates to the Democratic National Convention, need to continue the fight against economic inequality, racial injustice, political corruption, and climate change. If successful, they might just bring to fruition the work of the Progressive Party in Philadelphia nearly seventy years ago."


In fact, all the goals of the Progressive Party remain unfulfilled beginning with the quest for peace and disarmament--- beating swords into plowshares and reordering the priorities of this country away from militarism and war and meeting the needs of the people in a way making the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights a living reality for all people rather than remaining obscure words on a yellowing piece of paper.


It is the epitome of intellectual, ideological and political dishonesty to suggest that it might be possible to bring to fruition the work of the Progressive Party through the Democratic Party.


In fact, the Chair of Henry Wallace's campaign, the former socialist governor of Minnesota elected on the Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party ticket--- Elmer Benson, wrote this:


http://collections.mnhs.org/MNHistoryMagazine/articles/47/v47i04p154-161.pdf


What we need in this country, and there isn't a working class in any country in the world that doesn't need this, is a strong, united progressive party with a working class base that is anti-monopoly/anti-imperialist with a platform committed to real reforms aimed--- not at trying to solve capitalism's problems because those problems are inherently unsolvable--- but aimed at solving the problems of working people with a "21st Century Full Employment Act for Peace and Prosperity" which would create jobs at real living wages with Affirmative Action strictly and stridently enforced with wages in line with the actual "cost-of-living" through the creation of a National Public Health Care System (nothing in common with single-payer, the fraud of Obamacare or Bernie Sanders' fraudulent scheme together with a National Public Child Care System--- both publicly funded, publicly administered and publicly delivered.... nothing at all controversial but like public education.

Such a party would have the stated goal and objective of challenging Wall Street for political and economic power... not simply regulating Wall Street as Bernie Sanders suggested.

And the big banks need to be nationalized and placed under public ownership and democratic control not busted up as suggested by Bernie Sanders and his small sectarian grouping of "democratic socialists."

We need a new kind of people-centered politics.