valid projects, unpropitious projects, romantic projects

My own project (re: the electoral arena) is to break open the duopoly and then have a viable Green politics option for the American electorate.

DSA has a different (primary) project. It’s a perfectly valid one: elect DSA members as Democrats with the objective of eventually transforming the Democratic Party into a social democratic party. I don’t think they’ll be successful with that, but maybe they will. I wish them good luck. It would be beneficial for all of us if they were successful.

The problem for them, organizationally, is that half the membership actually has in mind a different ultimate project: To build up an independent party. Some of the latter people may figure: Work within the Democratic Party for the time being, but split with them as soon as it looks possible to establish an alternative party. They won’t be all so enthusiastic about the primary project. And I believe they are headed for frustration in a different way. What they have in mind is the delusional notion of a Marxist “party of the working class.”

Working class to power. The romance of it is fading, but slowly, generation by generation. Speaking of projects, that one had an almost-spiritual, clearly powerful appeal:

https://www.versobooks.com/products/890-the-romance-of-american-communism

“Before I knew that I was Jewish or a girl I knew that I was a member of the working class.” So begins Vivian Gornick’s exploration of how the world of socialists, communists, and progressives in the 1940s and 1950s created a rich, diverse world where ordinary men and women felt their lives connected to a larger human project.