Re: [Marxism] Green Politics: A Divergence into Muted ClassCollaboration

["Carlos A. Rivera" <cerejota@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Louis Proyect" <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>

> We are very far from that moment now. What is needed now is a electoral
> movement that can link up with the social movements and the working-class
> and speak for them and help generalize their struggles. In other words, we
> lack a left version of the Republican Party, which works closely with its
> social base.

I agree fully with you in this, but I fail to see how the Green Party is
such a movement.

It has been plagued by the same problems all socialist and non-socialist
left-leaning electoral "third" parties in the USA have faced since FDR,
namely a concerted effort on the part of the Democratic Party to destroy any
such movements when they are begining, or to absorve them if they are
already established.

This even happened to the SPUSA and the CPUSA, which are both rumps of their
former, multi-million votes for president machines, and are, except for a
core constituency that refuses to give up, essentially the far-left of the
Democrats.

I believe this is varously due to the "first past the post/winner takes all"
electoral system of the USA, which discourages the creation of additional
parties, coupled by the corrupting abilities of a party that offers all the
benefits of government (or of NGOs to use your pet devil) while letting
people hold on to the lie they are figthing for a better world. A biparty
system will by neccesity consist of a left and a rigth, even if the terms
become relative.

Another thing is racial disfranchisement, in particular at the House level,
which tends to get representatives from homogenous communities.

For example, while the rigth-wing propaganda against Rep. Luis Gutierrez
(D-Chicago) that links him to the FALN is all lies, it is all lies because
he was a member of *my* organization's predecesor, who was very critical of
the military adventurism of the FALN.

To hear him talk (I met him and he spoke about this) about why he joined the
Democrats is to understand their stranglehold. The only way to give his
community a voice to mitigate immediate problems was precisely to join it,
run for office and win. And he did so over the official machine and with the
support of almost every Puerto Rican socialist and community group in his
constituency. It was a way to provide results to very pressing material
conditions that couldn't wait for the revolution. I do have a lot of
criticisms of Gutierrez, but those ar ebeyond this discussion. I just want
to use a concrete example of what I am talking about.

If the Democratic Party has one "positive" things, in my opinion, it is the
ability to champion Congressional representation for racial and ethnic
minorities. While this support has not be total, has indeed been lukewarm,
and is limited to the House (the Senate is still a white man's preserve),
the Green Party has failed miserably in reaching out to communities of color
at the local level, something the Democratic Party excels at, and has also
failed miserably in reaching even one local government. And did so even in
the 2000 election, when Michael Moore et al supported them wholeheartedly.

(If you want to argue that Camejo is an example of racial inclusivity, this
is like saying that George W. Bush is not a racist because his two
Secretaries of State have been black. Tokenism doesn't cut it. I mean, how
many black people actually voted Republican? How many black people are in
leadership positions in the Republican Party? The same questions have to be
sked about the Green Party.)

Related to this racial acceptance, is the existence of large local
Democratic Party constituencies with left and even far-left connections,
which control Party machines that provide great privilege on the cynical
side, and great ability to effect localized change on the idealist side. The
DNC is not the Leninist CC that the RNC is, but some of the local DP
organizations are quite well organized, and some are quite far left, in
particular in areas were the Green Party sees its own natural base (eg San
Francisco). This local machines have the money, the support, and have
effected positive things from a progressive point of view while in power,
and hence are hard to challenge. The DNC tolerates this leftism because it
helps them get votes.

There are other reasons for the dominance of the Democratic Party in the
left, in spite of it not being a leftist party, but I think those are the
main ones.

Now, before I sound like contradicting myself, I am all for reformist
formations as independent expressions of the power of the people. A National
Democratic Front, if you will. And if the Green Party ever overcomes that,
or has the possibility of becoming so, I will be there. But it isn't and it
has shown not a sign of doing so.

My abstract bet, on the other hand, is a movementist strategist, with a
left-refoundationist tactic and splitting the Democrats as a goal.

It is forcing the contradiction between the fartest-left of the DP base and
the rest of the party, from *outside* of the Party. The Democrats, unlike
the Republicans, have only nominal Party loyalty. If the local Democratic
honchos who nevertheless oppose imperialism, support gays, support economic
justice, I mean support any transitional/reformist demand you can think
off/up, can see their positions of power and priviledge not being
significantly threatened, or see their political survival in jeopardy if
they continue to connect at a national level with the Democrats, then we
will see the beginings of a real left national electoral organization.

Many people speak of this, yet it has not materialized. I has no answer as
to why, but this is so. This is why I am so preocupied with the critique of
the left from the left. It seems to me that a lot of looking critically in
the mirror has to go down if a true left thrid party alternative is to
emerge. Something has to be wrong with us if we agree on so many things and
yet fail to turn agreement into action, or disagree in so many things that
we fail to understand the impossibility of ideological homogenity in the
current stage of struggle.

Yeah, this might sound strange coming from me, but I don't lie when I say I
am ML.

Elections are the rope to hang'em all high.

And hell yeah I want to see an effective ropemaking machine. Yet I harbor no
illusions about electoral politics. Elections are about power, wielding it,
and molding it, as the PT in Brazil has learned. And we must not harbor
those illusions either, if we already are willing to compromise ideological
purity to support the Green Party and similar formations, why aren't we
capable of sacrificing political purity in order to capture power, or
rather, to deny power to the two-headed monster, Republicratzilla?

sks

ps Actually, thats the model for a third party, the PT, in the sense it
survived loss after loss to build itself up.


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