Black Exodus (was Re: Alterman: Left in Shambles)

Nathan Newman nathan at newman.org
Wed Nov 15 09:17:20 PST 2000


----- Original Message ----- From: "Justin Schwartz" <jkschw at hotmail.com> To: <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com>


>What makes you think that the left is too weak to get its own institutions
>going, but powerful enough to take the Democratic Party away from its
>owners? --jks

Because in elections, we have first-past-the-post elections, so new parties inherently suffer collective action problems that primary challenges do not. Similar problems exist in the union context, where workers are unlikely to sacrifice existing power, however flawed, for starting from scratch.

As I've stressed, the problem is not that the opposing rightwing forces are necessarily more strategic than the left, since I have confidence we can beat them in the right contexts, but that the constituency that the Left seeks to lead itself will not follow the Left into new institutions because of these collective action problems.

But since those constituencies are the majority at the base level in institutions like unions and the Democratic Party, there is no collective action problem in the Left seeking to take them over, only the normal strategic problem of marshalling power and resources to combat more conservative forces.

The Socialist Party and the IWW were, respectively, the strongest third party and the strongest dual union in US history, and neither of them ever achieved significant power or even majority support among the working class. In a sense, you could call the CIO a dual union, but that was a split from the broader AFL that at least started with a significant base. I leave open the possibility of a third party or dual union taking signficant leadership if it is formed out of a significant caucus or organization formed within existing institutions, since the collective formation in existing institutions may lead to the power to collectively walk out - thereby solving much of the collective action problem that traditionally stops third parties and dual unions.

But parties like the Greens essentially starting from scratch with no organized base are dead ends from the get-go.

-- Nathan Newman



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