Talk:Socialist Party of America
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Use of "left"
The use of the words "left" or "leftist" and "right" or "rightist" in this article is confusing. For example, if by "left" you intend to mean Trotskyist, which appears to be the case in at least a few instances, you should go ahead and use "Trotskyist" instead of "left". Spleeman 10:06, 25 Jun 2004 (UTC)
- Can you fix it, Spleeman? It sounds like you have the proper knowledge! - DavidWBrooks 13:40, 25 Jun 2004 (UTC)
- Perhaps I shall when I find the time. :) Spleeman
- Yes, I agree..."During the 1930's the party experienced growth particularly among youth and turned leftwards politically." - I think most people would make the assumption that the SP was ALWAYS "leftward", at least somewhere on the left end of the spectrum. --Tothebarricades.tk 04:53, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Shachtman
Is it fair to say (as we do, after a recent edit), "... right-Shachtmanites and their allies... renamed it the Social Democrats USA... in pursuit of their strategy of realignment in American politics which sought to realign the Democratic Party on a pro-labor and pro-civil rights basis"? Seems to me that by this time the Shachtmanites were barely pro-labor or pro-civil rights, and barely even Democrats rather than Republicans. If anything, they were more centrist that George McGovern, who the Democrats had just run for president. I'm not expert on this particular period in the party's, or Shachtman's, career, but this rings wrong to me. -- Jmabel 22:31, Aug 12, 2004 (UTC)
Too little early history
Like lots of other articles on the left, this has a Fourth International bias: we have one paragraph on the first 18 years of the SP, when it was close to being a mass party, followed by several paragraphs on the split that gave rise to the CPUSA, which say more about the CP than the SP, and then more on the entry of the Trotskyists, the departure of the SWP, the incursions of the Shachtmanites, etc., etc. I appreciate the joy of sects just as much as the next person, but this article does not do justice to the subject. Somebody–not me–ought to rewrite it.
We should also be on the alert for words such as "hysterically," particularly when used in the construction "less hysterically." It's bad enough to use an overwrought, non-analytic word such as that (see Orwell's famous essay on this sort of left cliches) to condemn the followers of Max Shachtman, but to use it in a way that damns the Harrington crowd almost as an afterthought seems especially gratuitous.
I'm equally ignorant about the ins and outs of Shachtman's career, but I think Jmabel is probably right. But I think we have bigger fish to fry when rewriting this piece: "sewer socialism," nativism, the party's relations to the AFL and the IWW, etc. -- Italo Svevo aka 24.126.41.116 03:47, 20 Jan 2005 (UTC)