Escolar Documentos
Profissional Documentos
Cultura Documentos
1. Joanna Misnik, The Rainbow and the Democratic Party: New Politics Or Old?
[1988]
2. Bill Fletcher and Danny Glover, "Visualizing a Neo-Rainbow" [2004]
3. Peter Camejo, "The Avocado Declaration" [2004]
4. Christopher Day, “Electoral Work as Part of Revolutionary Preparation” [2010]
The Black elected officials are the main force within the sector of the
Rainbow that is trying to push the Democratic Party back to its
undeserved image as the party of "the common people," the image
crafted in Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal coalition. They are
alarmed by how readily a Democratic-controlled House went along with
Reagan's supply-side game plan, forsaking the party's championship of
big government and the welfare state. They wish to reassert their
presence in the party at a time when their constituencies are largely
ignored.
But the Black machine is practically on its own. The bulk of organized
labor, whose influence has waned in tandem with a shrinking
membership and an inability to mobilize votes, is standing aloof from
the fracas. The 1987 AFL-CIO convention made no presidential
endorsement and asked individual unions to refrain from
endorsements while the search for a "consensus" continued. This call
for a consensus was in part devised to discourage Jackson
endorsements from within the trade-union ranks.
Also included in the wing of the Rainbow trying to stem the Democratic
Parts rightward tide are the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).
For some time now, DSA has pursued a policy of pragmatic
realignment inside the Democratic Party, in alliance with those in the
AFL-CIO bureaucracy who are unhappy with labor's decreasing
leverage on party policymaking. The group has long ago abandoned
the perspective of a working-class breakaway from the capitalist two-
party framework and is content to declare that the Democrats are, in
DSA leader Michael Harrington's phrase, an “invisible labor party.”
To all the forces in its realigning wing, the Rainbow Coalition is a logo,
something that flashes on the screen during television debates to
identify Jackson and his general objective of representing all the
locked-out. The real apparatus, in their minds, is the Jackson Campaign
Committee, a much more traditional electoral structure that gets out
the votes, raises money and piles up sufficient delegates to force a
brokered convention where no candidate can win on the first ballot.
In part, the impetus for such a permanent organization came from the
demoralization after the '84 convention. The 465 Jackson delegates,
backed by 3.2 million primary votes, had seen all their platform
demands but one steamrolled into oblivion by the convention machine.
Those whose political experience was largely outside two-party
politicking were shocked at the backroom deals and betrayals. Many
left the convention and sat out the elections, refusing to work for
Mondale as Jackson had promised in his nationally televised convention
speech.
Jackson had begun his '88 campaign just as soon as the 1984 elections
were over, keeping himself in the national limelight and maintaining a
visible presence at peace and anti-apartheid protest actions. The
convening of the April 1986 Rainbow Coalition convention was seen as
a way to protect the momentum of the second campaign through an
organizational form outside—or rather alongside—Democratic Party as
a first step to some kind of progressive movement.
An "Inside-Outside" Strategy?
The election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 shocked many left activists into
discovering the dialectical relationship between social movements and
electoral institutions.... Electoral politics was no longer seen as a
substitute for movement-building, but as a necessary complement.
Although it was difficult to do both simultaneously, there was a
growing realization that the two forms of political activity were
dialectically related. (105-108)
In the case of both labor in the 1930s and the social movements of the
1960s, it was precisely at the point when major sectors of these
movements decided it was time to move "from protest to politics" and
act as a pressure group within and around the Democratic Party than
reforms began to slack off and eventually disappear. In fact, the
brevity of these two periods of major change is due to this very co-
optation. Unable to defeat capitalist control of the party from the inside
and claim it as their own, the reformers were themselves beaten and
became the reformed.
Left Rainbow advocates may argue that all this does not apply. After
all, they have an organization separate and apart from the Democratic
Party that enables them to resist absorption while they use the "tactic"
of Jackson's candidacy to build a new, integral progressive force.
Unfortunately this is not the case.
The Rainbow has only one tactic, one focus that glues all its
components together: Jackson's race for the Democratic Party
nomination. No other goals were established at the Raleigh convention.
By definition, this subsumes the Rainbow into the Democratic Party
and hands it over to those who want it to be nothing more than an
army of foot soldiers for the Jackson Campaign Committee.
This problem is not something only those outside the Rainbow can
perceive. The powerful New Jersey delegation to the Rainbow Con-
vention led a well-received fight to democratize the notoriously top-
down Rainbow structure. They were motivated by the fear that the
Rainbow will be dictated to by official campaign structures, stunting its
growth and threatening its ability to exist beyond `88. Some structural
changes were made, such as adding state chairs to the all-powerful
Board of Directors and halving the minimum number of members
required to receive a local charter.
Just one example. If a call had gone out from Raleigh for a national
mobilization in Washington for peace, jobs and justice around the time
of the contra aid voting, it could have resulted in a show of strength
that would have greatly aided the besieged Nicaraguan people. The
singular focus on Jackson's candidacy prevented ides like this from
even cropping up. There is growing awareness among those who
joined the Rainbow hoping it would evolve into a new progressive
movement that their vision will not be realized if they allow their
energies to be swallowed by the imperatives of Jacksoneering. Writing
in the February 1988 issue of Zeta magazine, longtime peace activist
Dave Dellinger, now a leader of the Vermont Rainbow Coalition,
addressed this concern:
The holy war that Jackson waged in 1984 against party rules governing
delegate selection and the Southern dual primary system has been
completely dropped. His protesting did much to expose how easily the
established machine can thwart an insurgent. Though Jackson polled
20 percent of the primary vote, he was accorded only 11 percent of the
convention delegates. His efforts resulted in lowering the minimum
threshold for being accorded delegates in primary states from 20
percent to 15 percent.
This time around there isn't a whimper about how undemocratic the
rules are, even though they have been revised to further guard against
any upsets. The number of super-delegates (that is, party leaders and
elected officials getting an automatic convention vote) has been
increased to 15 percent, from 568 in 1984 to 650 this year. No one
watching the media-hyped Iowa caucus shenanigans would have
recognized the Jesse Jackson who in '84 wrote an angry letter to the
Democratic leadership denouncing the caucus system of delegate
selection as thoroughly undemocratic and open to manipulation.
It is this dimension of his campaigning that attracts the left wing of the
Rainbow. Leading this protest movement into the tangle of the Iowa
Democratic caucuses to get delegates is what satisfies the Campaign
Committee variety of the Rainbow.
Jackson's intent may well have been to reassure whites that he could
represent their interests and let the party mainstream know that he is
not a Black militant firebrand. In fact, his campaign has downplayed
the special oppression faced by Blacks.
Vague Program
There have been two major periods of reform legislation in the past
fifty years, during the New Deal from 1933 through 1937 and at the
time of the "Great Society," 1963-1967. Both these periods saw mass
social movements arising outside of the electoral process. The 1930s
were the years of mass strike movements and the formation of
industrial unions. The decade of the '60s was ushered in by the civil
rights movement, which forced legislation illegalizing segregation and
prompted the Great Society programs. The massive anti-Vietnam war
movement, in part inspired by the Black struggle, forced an end to the
war-under the Republican administration of Richard Nixon.
Since the end of the 1960s, the U.S. economy, and the world capitalist
economy as a whole, has experienced a deepening crisis. This crisis
has comprised three major economic downturns, each worse than the
one before. Over the entire period of the 1970s and '80s, the corporate
rate of profit has been 40-50 percent below that of the 1950s and
1960s.
Most politicians today are not as blunt about their relationship with
business interests as was Senator Boies Penrose of Pennsylvania. "You
send us to Congress; we pass the laws under which you make money,"
he explained to a business audience, "and out of your profits you
further contribute to our campaign funds to send us back again to pass
more laws to enable you to make more money." (Bertell Ollman, "A
Marxist Interpretation of the U.S. Constitution," Monthly
Review,December 1987, 21)
Second, the financial resources of corporations and the men who own
them are many times that of the working majority of the United States.
They use this money, among other things, to donate to the campaigns
of politicians who follow policies they like and undermine candidates
who threaten their interests.
Money Talks
The other major component of the "New Deal" coalition was the "solid
South," built on the exclusion of Blacks and many poor whites from the
vote. The agricultural subsidies implemented by the New Deal were a
source of enormous income to the southern elite and ensured their
support for the Roosevelt coalition. The federal government also took
care not to challenge the domination of the southern political system
by the white elite. The dependence of the Democratic party on this
racist wing would be apparent in the postwar period.
The progressive measures adopted during the New Deal reflected the
combined pressure of mass social protest and the ultimate control over
final implementation by pro-Roosevelt business interests. For example,
the International Relations Counselors, a foundation controlled by
Standard Oil, General Electric and other "reformist" businesses, was
responsible for drafting the Social Security Act of 1935. They financed
the system with a highly regressive payroll tax rather than general
revenues as in other Western industrial nations.
In fact, labor's Democratic party gambit was a failure from the start.
While successful at influencing local and state-wide elections, the AFL
and the CIO were unable to prevent passage of the Taft-Hartley Act in
1947. Despite large Democratic majorities in Congress in the 1960s
and 1970s, labor has been unable to secure repeal of the Taft-Hartley
Act or passage of any pro-labor legislation.
Many of the reforms of the 1960s were similar to those of the 1930s—
brought into existence by mass movements, but with final
implementation controlled by the dominant business interests in the
Democratic Party. Presidents Kennedy and Johnson financed massive
increases in social spending by increasing the regressive social
security tax, while cutting corporate tax rates at the same time.
Between 1960 and 1970, the share of federal revenues provided by
corporate taxes dropped from 23.2 percent to 16.9 percent, while
income from personal and social security taxes grew from 59.9 percent
to 70.1 percent. Instead of corporations and the rich paying for
welfare, an unequal share of the burden fell on the working class.
Still, measures such as the 1964 Civil Rights Act were a tremendous
asset to the Black movement, providing leverage with which to attack
racist structures. Coupled with the strong antiwar and women's
movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s, many progressives were
able to extract concessions from Democratic-controlled legislative
bodies.
Indeed, for a brief moment the moderate wings of the social move-
ments captured the Democratic Convention of 1972 and nominated
George McGovern for president. They did not, however, seize the real
centers of power within the party. Millions flowed into the campaign
coffers of the Republicans and key Democrats withheld support from
their party's nominee, resulting in the "landslide" Nixon victory that
fall.
The "Right Turn" of U.S. Politics
The outcome of 1972 and of the Watergate scandal that followed was
the opposite of that envisioned by the reformers who supported
George McGovern. The remnants of the party's old guard, allied with a
new breed of "neo-liberals," took the party on an excursion to the right
that has yet to end. Behind this drift to the right—expressed both in
economic policy and in a growing tendency toward intervention abroad
—was the visible hand of big business.
After the 1974 recession, with profit margins down and competition
from Europe and Asia taking traditional U.S. markets, U.S. corporations
organized to end the era of "expensive" social programs and to
introduce a new business agenda into the political arena. Business
refined its ability to act as a class, submerging competitive instincts in
favor of joint, cooperative action in the legislative arena. The new
economic crisis, the worst since the 1930s, required a different set of
policies than those accepted for the last 40 years.
The election of Reagan, far from halting the Democratic slide to the
right, accelerated it. Eager to occupy the same political landscape as
the Republicans, the Democrats emulated their politics and, while
holding a majority of the House of Representatives, gave Reagan
everything he wanted. Accelerated deregulation of business, slashes in
social services and increased military spending all passed only because
of Democratic votes.
The "right turn" by Reagan and the Democrats was very sharp and
damaging to the majority of people. The 1981 tax reform reduced the
contributions by corporate taxes to revenues to only 6.2 percent in
1983. Taxes for people making less than $10,000 actually grew 22
percent, while those making over $200,000 a year had their taxes
reduced by 15 percent. Cuts in welfare eliminated 440,000 families
from the rolls, while those "fortunate" to retain benefits received on
the aver age 33 percent less than they had in 1970. Overall, half of the
cuts made by Reagan and Congress fell on those making less than
$10,000 a year.
"Special Interests"
The business pressures to move to the right also affected the way the
Democratic Party leaders and politicians viewed their traditional voting
base. Labor, minorities, women and the poor were labeled "special
interests." The party was urged to distance itself from these elements
and their social and economic concerns. Party leaders also warned
against seeming "soft" on defense. Two organizations were formed in
1985-the Democratic Leadership Council and the Democratic Policy
Commission-that vied for the mantle of meanness in social affairs and
toughness in foreign policy. The only two Democrats in the 1988 race
for the presidential nomination who did not belong to one of these
were Paul Simon and Jesse Jackson.
Self-styled "new breed" Democrats contend that the party must get
support from those groups who are voting Republican in large
numbers. They assume the poor will continue to vote in
proportionately fewer numbers than more affluent. Consequently, their
strategy is to win more white and middle-class votes. It is not
predicated on registering and mobilizing workers and the
disadvantaged.
Viewing Black and trade-union support as "safe," these people have
their eyes riveted on the Southern white vote. These strategists see
the traditional base of the Dixiecrat party as the pivotal factor in
achieving a regional majority, and they realize they have lost ground to
the Republicans. As no Democratic presidential candidate can win
without carrying several Southern states, this cynical calculation has a
potent influence on Democratic politics.
The "new breed" Democrats will make quick work of the cry for a new
New Deal base for the party. It is well outside the consensus that
business interests have shaped for the party's future. Reagan was able
to receive wide support from corporate interests in 1980 because he
was unencumbered by any pro-labor image and offered a program to
get corporate profits up by delivering the necessary blows to working
people's living standards. The Democrats have learned this lesson and
are now applying it to their own politics.
Suicidal Dependence
[Deleted sections “From Locked Out to Locked In”, “After Atlanta: What
Next?”, “Voters Drop Out”]
A Realistic Strategy?
Indeed, the Reagan years have seen a million people marching in June
1982 against the arms race; hundreds of thousands in the streets
against U.S. intervention in Central America; 500,000 marching for
lesbian and gay rights on October 11, 1987. Reagan was never able to
quash the "Vietnam syndrome." A majority continue to oppose
intervention in Central America. His administration contented itself
with a shameless sneak-attack on the tiny island of Grenada, knowing
that a land war against Nicaragua would result in a revolt at home. A
majority continue to support the right to abortion and oppose cutbacks
in social spending. Reagan even failed to divide the population with his
appeal to better-off workers to line up with him against "big
government" and the New Deal giveaways.
Yet during these years the left, becoming to some degree intimidated
by the right-wing ideological assault, has minimized its objectives. For
most of the left, the goal of independent politics has become "utopian."
It was time to hunker down in and around the Democratic Party to
push back the ascendancy of the right. Empowerment meant grabbing
the coattails of the powerful lesser-evil capitalist party as a means to
ride out the rough times presumed to be ahead.
As for funding, Jackson never has gotten corporate PAC money, and
won't with his program. According to the New York Times, Jackson
spent a grand total of $100,000 in the March 8, Super Tuesday primary
states, where he is a leading contender, as opposed to the millions
spent by others. Much of his meager war chest has come from small
donations and from passing the hat in churches and union halls. His
fundraising style called "unique" by the press and "possibly illegal" by
the federal government, which has legalized the ability of the
corporations to buy congressional candidates like so many Lear jets.
The social movements, the Black liberation struggle, and ultimately the
U.S. working class are the base for a new politics. In the long run, the
left's involvement in the Jackson campaign must be judged by whether
it advances the development of a new, radical political party, or simply
deepens the left's own immersion in bourgeois electoralism. The
process of bringing forth a political voice for workers and the
oppressed will not yield any quick and easy victories, given how long
the two-party, winner-take-all mythology has prevailed in this country.
But the failure to make a case now for independent politics can only
assure that the left will find itself voiceless and powerless when future
opportunities arise.
The question that we believe faces the Rainbow before and after
Atlanta is this: Will the Rainbow Coalition help the oppressed
communities and U.S. working people to find their political voice, or will
it instead lose its own?
Danny Glover and Bill Fletcher, Jr, “Visualizing
a Neo-Rainbow”
In 2004 the winner-take-all system of US electoral politics again proved
an obstacle to genuine democracy. While progressives found little to
get excited about in the John Kerry campaign, there were no viable
third-party candidates, leaving them without a fully satisfying choice at
the ballot box, even if most of us ended up voting for Kerry as a
statement against Bush. More important, there was no candidate
whose campaign offered progressives the opportunity to develop a real
political/electoral base that could move us closer to building power and
influence.
The most recent campaign that held that kind of promise was the
Rainbow insurgency of the 1980s, including the 1984 and ‘88
presidential campaigns of the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson, and the building of
the National Rainbow Coalition.
(1) throw up their hands and accept the terms of operation within the
Democratic Party;
Taking up this strategic challenge means coming face to face with the
problem of the Democratic Party. As much as many progressives may
wish for the replacement of the party by a left/ progressive party of
struggle, this is unlikely to happen in the near term. Independent
political parties have simply failed to ignite widespread populist
electoral activity. At the same time, no one should expect that the
Democratic Party will itself become the party of the dispossessed.
Instead, activists should look upon the Democratic Party as itself a field
of struggle. Such a view flows from a realization of the undemocratic
nature of the US electoral system and the dilemmas that creates. In
this context, the fight must take place both within and without the
Democratic Party. To carry out such a struggle necessitates
organization, vision and strategy. It also needs the right core in order
to anchor it in reality and build the united front that such an effort or
insurgency must represent. We believe these to be the key parameters
for an effective neo-Rainbow electoral strategy.
(2) to have people of color in its core leadership, and a base among
African-Americans and Latinos (not to the exclusion of others);
(6) to root itself among working people and their issues, and develop a
ground-up approach, involving ward and precinct organizations and a
targeted effort to build political power in key strategic zones. Let’s
consider each of these elements of a neo-Rainbow strategy in turn:
Inside/outside.
The core.
The Rainbow grew out of the black-led electoral upsurge of the early
1980s. It was rooted in a movement. In addition, the core was people
of color who linked racial justice with broader social- and economic-
justice issues. Likewise, for any effective neo-Rainbow effort, it is
essential to have a core that not only represents the changing
demographics of the United States but also comes to the table
representing actual constituencies.
A united front.
Pro-equality populism.
Every major gain in our history, even pre-Civil War struggles such as
the battles for the Bill of Rights, to end slavery, and to establish free
public education, as well as those after the Civil War, have been the
product of direct action by movements independent of and in
opposition to the two major parties.
Since the Civil War, without exception, the Democratic Party has
opposed all mass struggles for democracy and social justice. These
include the struggle for ballot reform, for the right of African Americans
to vote and against American apartheid (“Jim Crow”); for the right to
form unions, for the right of women to vote, against the war in
Vietnam; the struggle to make lynching illegal, the fight against the
death penalty, the struggle for universal health care, the fight for gay
and lesbian rights, and endless others. Many of these struggles were
initiated by or helped by the existence of small third parties.
Division of work
When social justice, peace, or civil rights movements become massive
in scale, threaten to become uncontrollable and begin to win over large
numbers of people, the Democratic Party begins to shift and presents
itself as a supposed ally, always seeking to co-opt the movement,
demobilize its forces, and block its development into an alternative,
independent political force.
The Republican Party has historically acted as the open advocate for a
platform to benefit the rule of wealth and corporate domination. It
argues ideologically for policies benefiting the corporate rulers. The
Republicans seek to convince the middle class and labor to support the
rule of the wealthy with the argument that “what’s good for GM is good
for the country,” that what benefits corporations is also going to
benefit regular people.
Such a view fails to grasp the essence of the matter. Political dynamics
work exactly the opposite. To silence the voice of the Green Party and
support the Democrats strengthens George Bush and the Republican
Party because only the appearance of forces opposed to the present
policies, forces that are clearly independent of corporate domination,
can begin to shift the relationship of forces and the center of political
debate. Despite the intention of some of its promoters, the anti-Green
Party campaign helps the policies pursued by Bush as well as his
reelection possibilities.
Opposition is rising
Opposition is rising against Bush. The overwhelming majority of the
world is against Bush’s war policies. The resistance to the occupation
in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the inability of the US media and
government to prevent the world from hearing the truth about these
events, is weakening Bush’s standing. The corporate interests and
their media apparently want to make a great effort to get Bush
elected, but if this becomes too difficult, the Democratic Party will be
prepared to appear as an “opposition” that will continue the essence of
Bush’s policy with new justifications, modifications, and adjusted
forms.
The only force that could upset the general direction set by the
bipartisan policies voted over the last few years would be a
destabilizing mass development inside the United States along with
world public opinion. This occurred during the war in Vietnam and
forced a reversal of US policy. Saving Bush from a backlash is now on
the agenda and the positions of the Democratic Party help Bush in
several ways.
Second, they seek to convince the people that what was wrong with
the invasion of Iraq was just that the United Nations, meaning the
undemocratic Security Council dominated by the wealthiest countries,
did not lend it political cover, or NATO was not the military form used,
or the US did not include France and Germany in stealing Iraq’s
resources, or not enough troops are being used or some other question
about how things are being done rather than what is being done.
They promise that all will be well if the Democrats can take charge and
handle the matter better. With this orientation the Democrats free the
hands of corporate America to give their funding and support to Bush.
With few exceptions of relatively isolated voices, they offer not real
opposition but only nuances. Those isolated voices (Kucinich, Sharpton
and Moseley-Braun) of opposition within the Democratic Party, no
matter how well-intentioned, have a negative consequence. They give
legitimacy to the Democrats as “opponents” of the Republicans.
For the Green Party there is nothing more important or effective long
term and short term in stopping Bush than to expose how the
corporate interests use their two-party system and the role of the
Democrats in that system. We must let all Americans who question the
policies of Bush, who favor the rule of law, peace, and our Constitution
and Bill of Rights see the Democratic Party’s hypocrisy, how they
support the war and the PATRIOT Act.
They blocked the formation of a mass Labor Party when the union
movement rose in the 1930s. They derailed, co-opted and dismantled
the powerful civil rights movement, anti-Vietnam war movement and
women’s liberation movement. They have even succeeded in
establishing popular myths that they were once for labor, for civil
rights and for peace. Nothing could be further from the truth.
All people who believe in democracy need to call on The Nation and
others to stop their campaign against the Greens, a campaign at the
service of corporate America. Instead they should join with the Greens
in a battle for democracy in the same manner in which many
progressive Democrats in San Francisco rejected their party’s
nomination for mayor and joined with the Greens to create a
progressive alternative. We need to suggest to “progressive”
Democrats that they should concentrate their attacks on their
leadership’s support for George Bush’s policies, and not on the Greens
for telling the truth and actually fighting for the ideals many of these
Democrats claim to hold.
The Green Party can and will win the hearts and minds of people when
they see us as reliable and unshakeable, if we stand our ground. In
time this leads to respect and then support. Those Greens who agree
with our Ten Points but have disagreements with this Avocado
Declaration need to be respected. We need to allow an open and
honest debate as an essential part of our culture.
The Green Party seeks to bring all those who agree with its Ten Key
Points into one unified political party. It welcomes diversity, debate and
discussion on issues of strategy, tactics and methods of functioning. A
healthy organization that fights for the interest of the people by its
nature will always have all kinds of internal conflicts, sharp differences,
personality difficulties and all other things human. This is not only
normal, it is healthy. The Greens do not consider themselves a
substitute for other movements or organizations, such as peace
organizations and other specific issue groups that seek to unite people
of all political persuasions around a specific platform. We welcome
diversity with other groups that seek to move in the same direction
with us but have not agreed to join us. We will try to work with such
organizations where common ground exists. Thus the Avocado
Declaration includes a call for the Greens to accept diversity and
maintain unity as we seek to build an effective mass organization.
Let those who agree with the Avocado Declaration help protect and
build the Green Party as a vehicle for democracy, freedom, liberty and
justice for all.
Christopher Day, “Electoral Work as Part of
Revolutionary Preparation”
I think there is a lot of opportunism in most of the work that leftists do
within the Democratic Party and at the same time think the sweeping
attacks on any work within the Democratic Party are crude in their
understanding of the problems such work seeks to grapple with. I wish
the Democratic Party were obsolete. Its not. It commands the uneasy
allegiances of the majority of folks we want to win to revolutionary
politics. The reasons for this are complex and moralistic finger-wagging
doesn’t advance the process.”
“You must not sink to the level of the masses, to the level of the
backward strata of the class. That is incontestable. You must tell them
the bitter truth. You are in duty bound to call their bourgeois-
democratic and parliamentary prejudices what they are—prejudices.”
I am not ashamed to say that I voted for Obama and had I been in the
country would even have tried to find a way to campaign. But I have to
admit that in the work of most socialists who campaigned for Obama
that I saw, there was precious little telling of “the bitter truth.”
The fact that FRSO was unable to come to a unified position on how to
relate to the Obama campaign doesn’t seem to me grounds for
condemnation. While I was a lonely voice among supporters of Kasama
arguing for supporting Obama’s election (and have not revised that
stance in the wake of Obama’s predictable, indeed predicted, actions
as the front man for US imperialism), I think it is a sign of the political
health of this project that I was encouraged to voice my dissenting
views.
That is to say that if we don’t want to end out just carrying the water of
the liberal wing of the Democratic Party we are going to have to build
an explicitly socialist hard-core capable of contending for leadership
within any emergent progressive electoral bloc. This seems to me the
piece that is absent at least from FRSO’s public discussions of its
involvement in electoral work and one reason why some folks see that
work as objectively liberal.
I do, however, think we are a ways away from such a situation and that
in the present period any explicitly socialist intervention in Democratic
Party politics (running socialist primary challengers, taking over
chapters of the College Democrats, etc…) will be primarily
propagandistic, which is not to say that they aren’t necessary to
building up an actual socialist-led progressive electoral capacity. I think
its critical that any such efforts be as explicit as possible that their
objective is to split the base of the Democratic Party away from its
ruling class leadership and carve out spaces in which the case for that
can be made.
So far this discussion has largely avoided the role of the various
national questions in such a strategy. If ones vision of socialist
revolution in the U.S. imagines an alliance between the multi-national
working class and the oppressed nationality communities at its core,
this necessarily complicates the question of what leadership of a
progressive electoral bloc would look like. Which is to say that the
oppressed nationality movements, such as they are at this moment,
are by their nature multi-class alliances in which at least fractions of
the oppressed nationality bourgeoisies have and will continue to play a
role. In practice this means, I think, that the rhythm of any process of
building up a socialist hard-core operating within the Democratic Party
is going to be tied very closely to the process of building up socialist
leadership within the oppressed nationality communities.
If, on the other hand, you deny the need for multi-class oppressed
nationality alliances, insisting either, like some Trotskyists, that there
is no national question, or that such movements should simply ditch
their bourgeois wings, then it should be a simple matter to build up a
socialist force either inside or outside the Democratic Party. The fact
that it isn’t simple at all, suggests to me that the national questions,
and the attendant importance of oppressed nationality bourgeois
forces as well as the pull of white privilege over broad sections of the
white working class are serious complicating factors that we ignore at
our peril in these discussions.
While I don’t think FRSO has figured out how to cut the Gordian knot of
the intersection of the national questions with the problem of the
Democratic Party, I do think they are one of the few still extant groups
that have given the problem anything like the serious attention it
deserves and that we should study both their practice and the debates
(internal and with other forces) that have informed that practice.
Marc writes:
One could just as easily make the argument that the whole electoral
process in the US is a “tool of imperialism and the capitalist class” and
that any participation in it at all (including yours) only sends the
message that we can vote capitalism out of existence. Presumably you
believe that the explicit content of your own campaign effectively
countered any such effect. I see no reason that the same couldn’t be
true of an explicitly socialist primary challenge against a sitting
Democrat.
I would argue further that there are some reasons to think that primary
challenges would often be MORE potent opportunities to get our
politics out. One of the very real problems with waging third-party
efforts in the first-past-the-post electoral system that we have in the
U.S. is that as soon as you begin to poll more that one or two percent
you become a potential spoiler and this drives rational voters who may
very well be closer to your politics than to the politics of the
Democratic Party to vote for the Dem anyway, and even to become
quite antagonistic towards your efforts as we saw with the Nader
campaigns. Now if your only reason for participating in elections is to
do some low-level propaganda work, and you are more or less content
with the role of perpetual gadfly, this may not be such a big deal, but if
you are really interested in trying to win a large section of the
Democratic electorate to socialist politics, a pre-condition I believe for
any serious shot at revolution in this country, this is actually a very big
problem.