The Green Party failed to regain ballot status in New York on Tuesday. With its superior budget and no threat to the two-party system, the Working Families Party easily retained its ballot line. We have a new, independent socialist Senator in Vermont, although his Progressive Party studiously avoided incurring the wrath of the Democrats by not contesting any major elections.
This is a disappointing time for supporters of an independent people’s party. The Green Party is clearly on the wane, with ballot status in a few dozen states and the mighty Nader campaign of 2000 a fading memory. Not to be too pessimistic, but I have been predicting it for six years now. The Greens will join a crowded graveyard of similar efforts to establish a third party, a party of the people, to supplant the Democrats. They come along every few election cycles. There’s Bob LaFollette’s 1920’s Farmer-Labor Party, Henry Wallace’s Progressive Party in 1948, the 1960’s Peace and Freedom Party of Eldridge Cleaver, the 1970’s People’s Party of Benjamin Spock, the 1980’s Citizen’s Party of Barry Commoner and the Green Party of Ralph Nader. There is no such party on the horizon, just the detritus of past efforts, which exist here and there scattered among the states.
I was not a supporter of the Greens at their height. In 2000, I managed the Socialist Party’s presidential campaign of David McReynolds. I drafted the candidate to run, raised about $20,000, put him on the ballot in seven states (including Florida, where his 622 votes eclipsed the 537 votes by which Bush officially triumphed; fuck you very much), got him in front of dozens of college audiences and garnered some pretty fantastic press coverage for a tiny little party.
Was I wrong in 2000 not to support Nader’s candidacy, one of the most energetic, high profile threats to the two party system in the late 20th century? The answer to that question is complicated. Certainly in a year when the burning question among liberal circles was whether a vote for Nader was, in effect, a vote for Bush, it was a tad awkward to explain to people that, no, I wouldn’t be voting for Nader or Gore but for someone they’d likely never heard of. It struck most listeners as typical sectarianism of the socialist left, and, indeed, it was.
In the Socialist Party’s defense, our crystal ball was just as clouded as the Green Party’s. Ralph Nader ran lackluster, quiet semi-campaigns in 1992 and 1996 (the former in the Democratic New Hampshire primary, the latter as the Greens’ drafted standard bearer), and there was no telling in late 1999 (when the SP had to choose to run or not) that Nader would, in fact, campaign seriously, energetically and in the face of such opposition from his liberal former allies. Had I known then that he would do so, I would likely have still supported running a Socialist Party candidate, but I’d have been wrong. But even that is complicated. As exciting as the 2000 Nader campaign was, as much of a blow to the two-party system that it had been and as many activists that it created, as many voters it ripped away from the Democrats and as many progressives it split away from the shrill, bankrupt liberals, a few short months later, only the barest hint of the Nader movement was left as many of its supporters were scared back into the Democratic fold. Meanwhile, the attention that the Socialist Party got for its campaign (we delighted in media attention; I got David on “Politically Incorrect” and “the Daily Show” and my sarcastic voicemail in response to the Florida vote controversy was quoted in the “Washington Post.”) increased our tiny membership by about 30%.
But that’s a sectarian justification. As little as there was, in the end, to show for the Green Party effort, the right policy would have been to support it, to strike a blow at the two-party system and gain the long-term loyalty of as many voters as possible for an eventual mass party of the people. The problem with an organization like the Socialist Party, that makes the running of candidates under its banner – even if done in only a handful of instances a year – its raison d’etre is that it inevitably leads to the priority of party building over movement building.
The mass people’s party that we need will not be able to meet the stringent ideological requirements of sectarian socialists. It cannot be Marxian, although it must be free of corporate money and influence. We need a party that will push for universal health care, oppose militarism, democratize the broadcast media, promote equal rights for gays and affirmative action for blacks, that will be feminist in its internal decision-making, promote unions rights, expand Social Security, tax the rich, fully fund our schools, open up our ballots and push for fairer systems of elections. We socialists should take our place within such a party as activists and allies of the major streams of progressivism, only splitting after major reforms have been introduced and we can take a sizable following that demands to go further with us out of the party. It would be far better to be left opposition to powerful social democrats than weak liberals.
Should such a party form, it is likely to happen only when a large number of the furthest-left liberal elements of the Democrats – including many officeholders – are willing to finally break with the Siamese twins of capitalism, and might perhaps be cobbled together by the patchwork of state ballot lines and parties – the detritus at past efforts to create a national people’s party – that have gained substantial followings. Which means that the “correct” electoral policy for a socialist to follow largely depends on the state in which you live. In California, it means being active in the Peace and Freedom party, or even the Green Party. In Vermont, it probably means Bernie Sanders’ Progressive Party. In New York, it might mean a policy of boring from within the Working Families Party and forcing primary elections against the worst of the Democrats in the best of the districts.
Should I join another socialist organization, it will certainly not be one that considers itself a “party.” I’ve spent too much of my life trying to recreate the conditions of Eugene Debs’ long-gone era. We need greater flexibility of tactics and openness to our natural allies, and less nostalgia and sectarianism.