Do Minor Parties Matter? [USA]

[Red Saxon]

I might pull some hairs on this one, but I think it's a valid question to ask.

Do our minor Socialist/Communist parties even matter in the long run? Sure, they're a great way to spread information and to identify with like-minded people, but they simply mean nothing compared to the juggernauts that are the Democratic and Republican parties.

As much as it pains me to say it, hijacking the Democratic party may very well be our best option to get anything done democratically. (but don't tell Glenn Beck)

[A Revolutionary Tool]

Join a capitalist party to try and take it over and do it with nobody noticing? What could possibly go wrong?

[x371322]

A better idea would be to hijack the Communist Party USA, and turn it into a Communist Party. :laugh:

[Q]

I might pull some hairs on this one, but I think it's a valid question to ask.

Do our minor Socialist/Communist parties even matter in the long run? Sure, they're a great way to spread information and to identify with like-minded people, but they simply mean nothing compared to the juggernauts that are the Democratic and Republican parties.

As much as it pains me to say it, hijacking the Democratic party may very well be our best option to get anything done democratically. (but don't tell Glenn Beck)

The point is not to fight for progressive politics within the context of bourgeois democracy. The point is to organise the working class, as a class on its own, independent from the bosses and their parties. While the Democrats have financial support from unions, workers have no actual say in the politics of the party. The say goes fully to the big business lobby groups. That is my understanding of the matter.

[Proletarian Ultra]

There's some circumstances where it might be useful:

If can you qualify for public funding and get some free money for propaganda on some issue or other. If it's a race that would otherwise be uncompetitive and you can use the campaign to draw attention to an issue that would otherwise be ignored. If it's a small enough electoral district where you can make an impact without buying media.

So, in other words...putting up a candidate for US President in 2008 would have been a waste of time. Putting up a candidate for Maricopa County Sheriff against Joe Arpaio would be a superb use of resources.

I think it's also, for what it's worth, worthwhile to people to vote and drive them to the polls if they want to go and don't have a ride. Even if all the candidates are bullshit, the right to vote was a historic victory for the working class and must be defended. And the practice of mobilizing politically can be more important in the long run than the actual goal mobilized for.


The point is not to fight for progressive politics within the context of bourgeois democracy. The point is to organise the working class, as a class on its own, independent from the bosses and their parties. While the Democrats have financial support from unions, workers have no actual say in the politics of the party. The say goes fully to the big business lobby groups. That is my understanding of the matter.

This is wrong in principle but right in US context. See Marx and Lenin on why (bourgeois) parliamentary representation is necessary for the revolution. I'll quote later on in the thread if I need to.

But communist electoral work has to be done in a worker's party; not necessarily communist, but proletarian. In the US there's no worker's party. The Democrats are a federation of regional class blocs that include the most of the proletariat, but it's not a worker's party. Not even in the limited way that UK Labour is a worker's party. Trying to reform the Democrats is a dead end because the entire US electoral system is basically designed to prevent a party of the urbanized working class from emerging. Jefferson and Madison and them are all but explicit about it.

Unless your state allows for fusion parties, like New York does. Then it might be worth it.

[Q]

This is wrong in principle but right in US context. See Marx and Lenin on why (bourgeois) parliamentary representation is necessary for the revolution. I'll quote later on in the thread if I need to.

But communist electoral work has to be done in a worker's party; not necessarily communist, but proletarian. In the US there's no worker's party. The Democrats are a federation of regional class blocs that include the most of the proletariat, but it's not a worker's party. Not even in the limited way that UK Labour is a worker's party. Trying to reform the Democrats is a dead end because the entire US electoral system is basically designed to prevent a party of the urbanized working class from emerging. Jefferson and Madison and them are all but explicit about it.

Unless your state allows for fusion parties, like New York does. Then it might be worth it.
Maybe my previous post was confusing, but I don't believe that participating in the election race is necessarily a bad thing. It can be a good thing to have some seats in parliament (while this is not a practical possibility in the US). The danger is that you get sucked up in the logic of parliamentarism, like I think the OP does. In the logic of "fighting for socialism" by constraining yourself to the work inside parliament. This is reformism.

I agree with you on the need for broad movement parties that strive to organise the whole class, not just a handful of self-declared communists. I dive deeper into that here (http://www.revleft.com/vb/greatest-internal-threats-t132147/index.html?p=1720157#post1720157) and here (http://www.revleft.com/vb/role-revolutionaries-t133075/index.html?p=1720148#post1720148). But I'm as pessimistic as you are on the strategy of trying to reform the Democrats.

[Revy]

I might pull some hairs on this one, but I think it's a valid question to ask.

Do our minor Socialist/Communist parties even matter in the long run? Sure, they're a great way to spread information and to identify with like-minded people, but they simply mean nothing compared to the juggernauts that are the Democratic and Republican parties.

As much as it pains me to say it, hijacking the Democratic party may very well be our best option to get anything done democratically. (but don't tell Glenn Beck)

I think there would be more agreement with taking over the Green Party because they are already a progressive party on the left. I think that if socialists all decided to join the Green Party they might be able to wield a great deal of influence. my opinion is that if you're fighting for socialism, you need a socialist party though....I can understand the frustration at how small the socialist parties are in the US. but I think if you are contemplating this kind of entryism, wanting to take over the Democrats would be futile.

[A.R.Amistad]

The Democrats and Republicans aren't as big as you think. Millions and millions of people may be registered as this or that party, but how many people are actually active in the party? How many people actively participate in what the parties do? If one where to narrow down the membership of the Democrats or the Republicans to active members, I think the membership levels would seem very small and insignificant. Just because the every-day guy on the street can say "oh, I'm a Democrat" or "I'm a Republican," doesn't mean it is really so. Sure, maybe they support the program and platform of the Democrats or the Republicans, but do they pay dues to the party? Do they help orgnize meetings? Do they even attend meetings? Do they participate in propaganda activities for the party? The bulk "membership" of these parties limit there participation in politics to going to the polls once a year. Members of smaller parties, such as the revolutionary socialist ones, are far more active and aware than those of the mass parties. Now it is agreed, we revolutionaries have a long way to go before we are even ready as an organization to lead the masses, but we should operate differently and make sure that all of our membership is active, and that we have the moral support of the non-active workers. The decisions of the Democratic and Republican parties are not made by the ranl and file membership. They are decided by the caucuses. The revolutionary parties (at least in theory) are supposed to be under the direct control of a majority vote by it's rank and file members, all of whom are active in the party's work to a certain level or degree. The people who claim to be rank and file Democrats or even Republicans can be swayed to stop giving their moral support to the capitalist parties, especially in times of revolutionary fervor. In fact, very few people nowadays, even those who vote a straigt ballot for their party, really have any secure faith in the two major parties and only choose to support them because they feel that there is no other way. It is our job as a revolutionary vanguard organization to propogate the revolutionary message to the masses and show how putting your faith in the Democrats and Republicans sets the worker back.

I do think you are right in saying that as of now, the revolutionary organizations and vandguards are too small to do any real mass revolutionary action and that needs to change. Party membership will fluctuate with the times, and at times when more and more people are radicalized, the rank and file membership of the revolutionary vanguard party will grow. At a time of great apathy and reaction like now, we can only expect the party to be quite small. A great example was the communists in Germany, who tried to lead a putsch without mass support in the 1920s. The Third International had been advising the Communist Party of Germany that it should strive to recruit "1 million party members" into the revolutionary vanguard organization before it took such actions. The majority of the population will probably never be actual members of the party, but it is still very important that the party have a fairly massive level membership like any other activist organization. What is truly important is that the party have the support of the largely non-political masses in the struggle.

As of right now, I'd like my party to follow a policy of recruiting "1 million members" into its ranks. :rolleyes:

[Proletarian Ultra]

Maybe my previous post was confusing, but I don't believe that participating in the election race is necessarily a bad thing. It can be a good thing to have some seats in parliament (while this is not a practical possibility in the US). The danger is that you get sucked up in the logic of parliamentarism, like I think the OP does. In the logic of "fighting for socialism" by constraining yourself to the work inside parliament. This is reformism.

I agree with you on the need for broad movement parties that strive to organise the whole class, not just a handful of self-declared communists. I dive deeper into that here (http://www.revleft.com/vb/greatest-internal-threats-t132147/index.html?p=1720157#post1720157) and here (http://www.revleft.com/vb/role-revolutionaries-t133075/index.html?p=1720148#post1720148). But I'm as pessimistic as you are on the strategy of trying to reform the Democrats.

I should have read your original post closer :o

There's a good essay from the Sparts (http://www.icl-fi.org/print/english/esp/61/electoral.html) (I know, right?) about the difference between electing parliamentary representatives and 'ministerialism' - which is the trap so many SocDem parties fell into.


I think there would be more agreement with taking over the Green Party because they are already a progressive party on the left. I think that if socialists all decided to join the Green Party they might be able to wield a great deal of influence. my opinion is that if you're fighting for socialism, you need a socialist party though...

You at least need a working class party. I think your instinct against the Greens is right, because in Europe the Green Parties in governing coalitions have been consistent neoliberal scum-suckers - worse than Labour/Social Dems in a great many cases. You're always going to be swamped by middle-class lifestylists. Anyway, you've still got them real structural problems of the two-party duopoly; we don't have Reps and Dems because people like them, we have them because first-past-the-post voting, large electoral districts, federalism and the presidential system all conspire against the emergence of third parties.

Historically, the best workaround has been electoral fusion (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_fusion), which is only legal in New York and a few other places. (Fusion politics was briefly successful at beating back Jim Crown in North Carolina (http://www.northcarolinahistory.org/encyclopedia/58/entry) in the 1890's). I know the unions have been trying to get it on ballot initiatives in more states...

[Q]

I do think you are right in saying that as of now, the revolutionary organizations and vandguards are too small to do any real mass revolutionary action and that needs to change. Party membership will fluctuate with the times, and at times when more and more people are radicalized, the rank and file membership of the revolutionary vanguard party will grow. At a time of great apathy and reaction like now, we can only expect the party to be quite small.

I think this idea is largely based on a myth really. An example often used to "backup" this idea are the Bolsheviks, saying they grew by tenfolds in 1917 until they were a real mass force. What is "forgotten" is that the Bolsheviks (or more correct the RSDLP) already was a mass party before WW1. Its membership dropped because of increased state repression, but immediately exploded when the lid was off. Why? Because the position the RSDLP took within the movement, it was seen by the workers as their party.

A small splinter has never grown to a mass party.

[Comrade Akai]

A better idea would be to hijack the Communist Party USA, and turn it into a Communist Party. :laugh:

Agreed!:lol:

We need action and we need it now.

[A.R.Amistad]

A small splinter has never grown to a mass party.

Say what you want about the Chinese Communist Party. Personally, I hate them, just as any true communist should. But the original Chinese Communist Party, founded by Chen Dixiu, began with twenty people meeting in a university auditorium. Look at them today :p

[Red Saxon]

I appreciate the discussion, and I love the hit on the CPUSA. :laugh:

[RED DAVE]

An old buddy of mine, Dave MacReynolds, was the Socialist Party candidate for President in 2000. He got about 500 votes in the State of Florida. The bogus majority that Bush had over Gore in Florida was less than 1000 votes! Ask Gore if minor parties matter or not. And I'm not even talking about the votes that Nader got.

RED DAVE

[A.R.Amistad]

Red Dave

An old buddy of mine, Dave MacReynolds,

My dad voted for him.