Yes, I'd like to hear more specifics of what you had in mind. In the meantime, I'll put down my thoughts about electoral process issues. You wrote: "We need to elevate this [proportional representation] to a human rights level" (at <http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/pipermail/lbo-talk/Week-of-Mon-20040315/005810.html>).
On one hand, when proportional representation got repealed in New York, Massachusetts, Ohio, etc., human rights were certainly at stake, as those who campaigned to repeal it made very clear -- they wanted to repeal it because it served to elect Blacks and Communists, including a Black Communist in Manhattan Benjamin Davis (Cf. Robert J. Kolesar, "Communism, Race, and the Defeat of Proportional Representation in Cold War America," April 20, 1996, <http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/polit/damy/articles/kolesar.htm>; and "Who's Got the Power?: Proportional Representation in New York City, 1936-1947," <http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/history/public_history/PR/intro.html>).
On the other hand, proportional representation has been sometimes used as an instrument of the Cold War:
**** [Cheddi] Jagan won elections in 1957 and 1961 and seemed destined to lead British Guiana to independence when he was buried by Cold War politics. [Maurice] St. Pierre makes excellent use of U.S. government documents to show how the Kennedy administration, convinced that Jagan might become another Fidel Castro, conspired with the local opposition and the British government to oust him from office. The trick would be to introduce proportional representation. [Forbes] Burnham could then ally the PNC [People's National Congress] to Peter D'Aguiar's small, middle-class party and thereby receive more votes than the PPP [People's Progressive Party, in whose formation Jagan and Burnham cooperated in 1950]. Racial violence engulfed the colony in 1962 and 1963 and perhaps explains why Jagan delivered himself to his enemies when he agreed that the British Colonial Secretary, Duncan Sandys, could impose a solution. Sandys promptly capitulated to the government of the United States. 7
An election based on proportional representation was held in 1964; Jagan garnered almost forty-six percent of the vote but Burnham's alliance with D'Aguiar provided more than the fifty percent required for victory. Independence came in 1966 but failed to end racial conflict. Burnham quickly maneuvered D'Aguiar from office; fraudulent elections kept him in power until his death in 1985. 8
(Thomas J. Spinner, Jr., "Maurice St. Pierre. _Anatomy of Resistance: Anti-Colonialism in Guyana 1823-1966_" [Book Review], _The American Historical Review_ 107.1, February 2000, <http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/ahr/107.1/br_112.html>) ******
And, more generally speaking, proportional representation initially got introduced because of the elite fear of working-class power and wish to block the main working-class party from dominating electoral politics outright -- take Switzerland, for example:
***** At the end of World War I social problems were severe and socialist groups were growing stronger. The possibility that social democrats could gain a majority threatened many citizens and the ruling radical democratic party stopped campaigning as heavily against PR for the last campaign as had done previously. Most of the leading media and many citizens saw PR as a way to accommodate social and political conflicts at the national level, just as it did in some cantons. This explains the very high yes vote in the third popular initiative about PR, which took place in 1918.
The introduction of PR had immediate consequences: the radical democratic party's seat share dropped dramatically in the 1919 election, but the catholic-conservatives did not win any extra seats and the social democrats' gains were smaller than expected. Instead, the number of parties increased: the formation of the farmers' and peoples' party is directly linked to the introduction of PR.
(Georg Lutz, "Switzerland: Electoral Reform from Below: The Introduction of Proportional Representation in Switzerland 1918," <http://www.ipw.unibe.ch/mitarbeiter/lutz/docs/Switzerland%201918.pdf>) *****
In short, if the power elite see that working-class power is relatively weak and fragmented, as in the United States today, they will do their utmost to block proportional representation; if they see that the working-class are relatively strong and united and the main working-class party is poised to gain the majority outright, they will use proportional representation to fragment working-class power:
***** As soon as universal suffrage was adopted, which led to the massive entry of mostly left-wing voters and, hence, to a radically new electoral arena, the ruling elites followed different solutions. The plurality/majority system survived under two circumstances. First, it remained in place in those countries in which the new entrant (a socialist party) was weak and, itself the victim of strategic voting, could not challenge any of the established parties. Second, it was maintained in those countries in which, although the new entrant became strong, one of the established or nonsocialist parties retained a dominant position in the nonsocialist camp. Since it could easily attract the strategic vote of all nonsocialist voters (mostly worried about blocking the victory of social democracy), the dominant party acted rationally in maintaining a highly constraining electoral rule. By contrast, proportional representation was adopted in those countries in which the socialist party was strong and nonsocialist parties controlled roughly similar shares of the electorate. Failure to reduce the electoral threshold would have led to an overwhelming victory of the socialist party.
(Carles Boix, "Setting the Rules of the Game: The Choice of Electoral Systems in Advanced Democracies," _American Political Science Review_, September 1999, <http://www.findarticles.com/cf_dls/m0259/3_93/63716365/print.jhtml>) *****
So, I'd be cautious about elevating proportional representation to a level of human rights, i.e. good in themselves, since, even as it is, a good number of Greens and other Third-Party enthusiasts tend to make proportional representation and other tools of electoral politics their primary issues, sounding like policy wonks.
Art says:
>Black people do not vote for Democrats out of loyalty, like some
>fucking dog, as the typical idiotic slander goes, but rather out of
>recognition of the realities of what is currently a two-party system.
Yes, it's mainly the recognition of the realities, as you say, but partisan loyalty doesn't have to mean a derogatory sense of being loyal to the party bosses -- I think partisan loyalty can and does come from the sense of being loyal to families and friends who go to the same churches, visit one another, etc., in short, out of a web of social networks.
>We don't need you to talk to us, since we already clearly understand
>the situation. Why the fuck do you think I'm registered as a Green?
Yeah, Bill Fletcher told me the same thing (with regard to the anti-war movement, not the Green Party), though he did not say "fuck." :-) Understanding the situation is one thing, but folks who already understand the situation, such as 80-90% of Black communities, consolidating their power is another thing. What's the point of a social movement or political party if it can't even bother to try to win those who already understand??? More importantly, I'm also saying this because white Greens tend to get defensive about the Green deficit in Black voters and members -- they need to overcome defensiveness, recognize the problem, and try to remedy it. I agree with you on your remarks below:
>More importantly, if, as you say, history is any guide, then the
>only way to draw Black people out of the Democratic Party would be
>to provide an alternative that speaks to their needs in a way that
>would make most on the Left somewhat uncomfortable, that being a
>progressive, possibly radical, Black political party or a party
>composed mostly of POC, or at the least, where POC were calling the
>shots. Anything else would most likely disintegrate over the power
>struggle that would likely ensue.
>
>The Greens haven't even begun to contemplate what would really
>happen if there was in a fact a serious influx of POC into their
>party.
<snip>
>A strong party will not emerge in a fucking vacuum, but only as a
>by-product of a movement.
Art also says:
>The problem with your formulation is that it acts as if elections
>are a game, outside the context of the effect that bourgeois
>political decisions have on the objective conditions of people's
>lives.
On that we differ. On 90% of the issues the Republicans are worse than the Democrats, but, on the rest, the Democrats manage to deliver bigger blows against workers than the Republicans. The tragedy is that the issues on which the Democrats outdistance the Republicans in the rightward movement are often more devastating than the others on which they are better than the Republicans. Moreover, if the liberal elite manage to elect John Kerry by neutralizing the main left-wing electoral alternative to the Democratic Party and allowing Kerry to run to the right of Bush, e.g., on fiscal discipline, the occupation of Iraq, etc., they can move both the Democratic and Republican Parties to the right -- just imagine what Democratic and Republican candidates we will face in 2008, 2012, and later! -- Yoshie
* Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/> * Calendars of Events in Columbus: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html>, <http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/> * Student International Forum: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>