The class struggle is the most basic, fundamental and important fact of life. The conflict between working people and corporate power permeates all aspects of society - the economy, politics, ideology and culture.
Why is this, and why can't the two sides just call a truce and live in peace? Because the nature of the capitalist system divides people into opposing camps with irreconcilable interests and forces the fight. The workers who comprise over 80 percent of the population create the wealth, but the corporate owners and financiers take the lion's share.
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The problem with this article is that it takes basic revolutionary concepts--class struggle, Marxism--and nearly turns them into their opposites. Class battles may have points of focus, like winning healthcare legislation, but the class struggle is something broader and more basic to capitalist society. It is founded as much on the reality that workers and employers, as classes, have nothing in common (at least speaking historically) as it does on Marx's point that communists have no interests apart from the workers in the broad class struggle. Marx certainly never meant that we should use the relative conservatism of a working class or a difficult political situation to justify our own occasional drift or list to the right, which this article seems to hint at. And few people certainly go through the trouble of taking part in the class struggle and class battles or becoming active and self-conscious leftists all so that they can become better Democrats. If the need to get out the vote in November must be hammered home, so should the message that workers and employers have nothing in common be driven home in equal measure.
As I stated on the PW page, this seems to be the common Party position.
I don't agree that progressives can never draw the lines of debate, that we have to debate within the lines we are given. That makes zero sense. If you let your rival frame the argument you will always lose.
I'm sick of worrying about the ultra-right. Our biggest problem currently is lack of positive movement by the so-called Center. Let the tea-baggers scream all day and marginalize themselves with insanity. Progressives would be better served by moving on their own agenda than living in constant response mode to the reactionary forces that are only willing to take part in 17th century dialogue.
And if the healthcare battle was a victory, I don't want any more victories. As stated in the prior comment, this is about class consciousness, and I fail to see how the Center is helping to increase that awareness and legislate accordingly.
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