Dan La Botz

United States: Successful convention moves Democratic Socialists of America to left
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United States: Left responses to Trump's election victory
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Below, Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal is republishing a series of statements releases by left parties and organisations in the United States in the wake of Donald Trump's election as president. This includes statements by the US Green Party's presidential candidate Jill Stein and VP running mate Ajamu S. Baraka, the national steering committee of Solidarity, and the International Socialist Organization, as well as an article by Dan La Botz.
United States: Who would you vote for in 1840? And who will you vote for on November 8?
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By Dan La Botz November 2, 2016 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from New Politics — Imagine that it is 1840 and someone approaches you on the street and hands you a flyer for James G. Birney, the presidential candidate of the new Liberty Party. The flyer says that the Liberty Party opposes slavery. It is the only party that does. The Democrats and the Whigs--the two parties of the two-party system of that time--supported slavery, not to the same degree perhaps, but neither party opposed slavery. The Liberty Party is new and small, tiny. It’s candidate Birney has absolutely no chance to win the election. But he stands opposed to slavery. Who will you vote for on voting day in 1840? Will you argue that voting for the Liberty Party would be wasting your vote, and that instead you would vote for the Whig or Democratic parties, both of which accepted slavery?
‘The hammer blow of the revolution’: Rosa Luxemburg’s critique of bourgeois democracy
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By Michael Löwy, translated by Dan La Botz August 8, 2016 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from New Politics — Rosa Luxemburg’s defense of socialist democracy and her critique of the Bolsheviks in her pamphlet The Russian Revolution (1918) are well known. Less well known and often forgotten is her critique of bourgeois democracy, its limits, its contradictions, and its narrow and partial character.
Hay vida después de Sanders: en busca del futuro político del movimiento
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[Original article in English here] Por Dan La Botz July 13, 2016 -- Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal traducción por Viento Sur -- El ambiente entre los 3 000 seguidores de Bernie Sanders reunidos el pasado fin de semana en el McCormick Place de Chicago rezumaba un optimismo improbable. Muchas de las personas que intervinieron proclamaron, entre vítores de la multitud, que el movimiento había triunfado, a pesar de que Hillary Clinton, la probable candidata oficial del Partido Demócrata, haya obtenido la mayoría de los votos populares y cuente con el apoyo de la mayoría de delegados y superdelegados, además del respaldo del presidente Barack Obama, del vicepresidente Joe Biden y de la senadora Elizabeth Warren. Esta paradoja –entre la creencia del movimiento de Sanders de que hemos logrado algo muy importante y la clara victoria de Clinton en las primarias– marca el contexto contradictorio de esta conferencia de gentes, yo entre ellos, progresistas, radicales y socialistas que buscan una vía hacia el futuro.
Life after Bernie Sanders: People’s Summit searches for the movement’s political future
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By Dan La Botz July 6, 2016 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from New Politics — The mood among the 3,000 Bernie Sanders supporters meeting in Chicago McCormick Place was improbably optimistic over the weekend of June 17-19, with many of the speakers proclaiming to cheering crowds that the movement has been victorious — even though Hillary Clinton, the presumptive nominee of the Democratic Party has received a majority of the popular votes and a majority of elected delegates and super-delegates, as well as the endorsements of President Barack Obama, Vice-President Joe Biden, and Senator Elizabeth Warren. That disjuncture — between the Sanders’ movement’s belief that we have achieved something quite important and Clinton’s clear victory in the primary — provides the contradictory context for this conference of progressives, radicals, and socialists searching for the way to the future, I among them.
United States: Should the left back Bernie Sanders' campaign? Two views
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The attitude to the presidential campaign of long-time independent US senator and self-proclaimed socialist Bernie Sanders has become a major debate on the US left. Some see his decision to run as a Democrat as the major dividing line, accusing him of sidetracking the left into support for the capitalist Democratic Party. Others, while recognising Sanders' shortcomings, point to the wider role his campaign can offer in providing a more radical pole of attraction in US politics at a time when the left is weak. Below Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal makes available two views from significant sections of the US socialist left. Readers' comments are encouraged in the comments box after the articles.

Mexico: President and his party re-elected; left divided and defeated
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EE UU: Cooperación sin precedentes en la izquierda
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United States: Unprecedented cooperation at Future of Left/Independent Action conference
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United States: Conference to explore left electoral possibilities
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Mexico: 2014 saw a resurgence of the broad opposition movement
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