Recently I read a short book titled "Thinking Green!", a collection of essays written by Petra K. Kelly, one of the founders of German Green Party and the European Greens. She was a recommendation to me by a fellow Green to learn more about what exactly Green values and philosophy consists of, and it was an enjoyable read that helped affirm those values.
Petra shares an interesting take on the Berlin Wall and fall of USSR and East Germany that I hadn't heard anywhere else. As a long-time activist, Petra describes making routine visits to East Germany for humanitarian aid and to help grow local activist groups in East Germany. She describes a growing group in East Berlin that favored Green values and ideals -- democracy, peace, social justice -- and a general trend toward decentralized democratic socialism against the statist form of "communism" pushed by Russia.
As the wall came down, the East German activists rose to take positions within the government vacated by the old Soviet-backed politicians that left when they saw what was coming. For a short time, Petra describes parades and marches in the street as the East German socialists, with the backing of the West German Greens, begin cleaning and rebuilding East Berlin.
However, Petra describes how that changed very rapidly as the American-backed West German government came in a few weeks later. The West Germans forced closing of all community banks in areas, and forced businesses to switch to West German currency for transactions. This had the effect of forcing East Germans to go to West German banks to get money, where the exchange rate was poor and fees were charged. For-profit private banks quickly moved into the neighborhoods, and with West German backing, used their financial power to put pressure on the socialist community organizations in favor of capitalism from American-backed West German businesses that suddenly flooded the city. Those same businesses and West German politicians began backing the unification narrative and used the nationalist (read: Neo-Nazi) element in East Germany as a way to oppose the Green-backed socialist organizations that were pushing for an independent state. With the sudden influx of money and power, the capitalist side won the struggle with the help of the nationalist organizations, and as Petra describes, the socialist marches and parades were quickly replaced with nationalist parades focused on pride in being unified German citizens, complete with huge German flags everywhere. Petra was one of the early members of the unified German parliament -- since elections in Germany use proportional representation, Greens have a good amount of seats and influence in Germany -- and describes seeing politicians in the parliament repeating German nationalist ideas and speeches that echoed some of Hitler's speeches. The West Germans were using that deep nationalist rhetoric to win votes and oppress the resistance as they profited from the switch to capitalism. I bet this doesn't sound familiar at all.
This story of American-backed capitalists forcing unification and stopping an independent socialist state from forming is obviously a part of the story I had never heard before. It was a very interesting read. By itself that story is worth a read, but there were other great essays.
Other essays included non-violence and "non-violent social resistance" as a way of fighting oppression and power without the need for violent war, and how the German Greens were influenced by Martin Luther King, Jr., and Gandhi's work. She talks the need to respect the environment and put global warming (climate change) at the forefront of all issues. She also writes about the need to elevate more women into leadership roles, and how Greens must always support social justice and human rights. She seems direct participatory democracy as a requirement to address human rights and the environment.
One interesting aspect was that the essays also somewhat criticized the German Greens. On several issues, one strong example in particular being the Chinese violence against the Tibetan people, the German Greens had stayed relatively silent as a whole, and Petra was not happy. She criticized the German Greens for losing their identity and values as they tried to become too mainstream and too much like the other parties in German. Some German Greens were worried coming out too strongly against China or for Tibet, for fear of causing waves and potentially losing votes in the upcoming elections. In other words, as is often the case, the influence of money and power had corrupted even some of the German Greens. She cautions other Green parties around the world from the same fate, and to ensure that as we grow our activism and political influence that we always keep our eye toward our goal: decentralized democracy and power so that we can further human rights and protect the environment.
Keep in mind this book was written in the 1990s, so I'm not sure how much of the criticism of the German Greens at the time still applies today. However, it is still a powerful lesson.
Our goal as Greens is not take power for ourselves or become the next "major party" that simply replaces the Democrats. Our goal is to remake our political and economic system to be more free, fair, and just, to all people. If you want to learn more about Green values and what we can do to stay true to them as we fight the good political fight, Petra Kelly's book is a great one.
Showing posts with label history. Show all posts
Showing posts with label history. Show all posts
Thursday, February 8, 2018
Tuesday, December 26, 2017
The Evils of Racism, Poverty, and Militarism
Martin Luther King Jr. (MLK) was always an important historical figure when I was in grade school. We certainly talked about him and the history of the civil rights movement, and I began to get this mental image of a great community leader that lead marches for civil rights, for the fair and equal treatment of black people. The famous "I have a dream" speech was emphasized, with his vision of black children living with white children in an integrated world.
However, when you start listening to the full speeches and not simply the snippets they play in school and documentaries, you catch glimpses of a wider philosophy. Sure, equality was a huge part of MLK's dream, he was indeed fighting for racial equality and a just system. However, MLK himself admitted that racial inequality was not the whole story; there was also a huge economic inequality component. He spoke of the need to address poverty before we could really tackle racial inequality. He also spoke of the need to establish democracy with real representation to address inequality, and how militarism and colonialism around the world was both a threat to democracy and allowed the cycle of poverty to continue. Those were dimensions of the argument that I was not as familiar with.
After seeing references to this on social media, it became clear I needed to go to the source and learn as much as I could about what MLK actually stood for, and not simply the media-friendly narrative. I picked up a copy of "Where Do We Go From Here?: Chaos or Community", which was published in 1968 as the last book written by MLK before his assassination. It's not a very long read (about 200 pages), but really shows just how eloquent MLK was and how much he believed in nonviolent resistance as a way to influence society.
While MLK's first goal is obviously to end racial inequality, he quickly moves into the need to address economic inequality. He saw economic inequality and militarism as a root cause of racism, that the three were inseparably related and so must be tackled together by coalitions of both blacks and whites in order to effect real long-lasting change.
He spent a significant amount of time in the early chapters outlining how the economic system and the government works against black people. He described how more blacks were deployed to war in Vietnam than whites, how blacks were denied access to higher education because it wasn't affordable, how blacks paid higher rent for subpar housing compared to whites, how most blacks held "menial" low-paying jobs, the unemployment rate was nearly twice what it was for whites, and few elected officials were black. He felt that much of the racism was actually economic racism, that many whites had poor opinions of blacks because of a conception that blacks were poor and uneducated. He was convinced that tackling the sources of economic inequality would go a long way to elevating the status of blacks in society and countering such racial stereotypes, and that more blacks needed to be involved in the political system.
He described that blacks since the end of slavery faced economic disadvantage in the US. As he put it on page 84:
This argument reminds me a lot of today's Democratic party that on the surface says it is for all of these wonderful liberal progressive ideas, but then doesn't back them up. They support universal access to healthcare, except only as expensive employer-provided insurance (leaving out those between jobs, or not working full time, and having expensive premiums and copays and deductibles even if you do) and not as a national single payer system that establishes it as a right. They support a $15 minimum wage, but want to phase it in slowly in the year 2025 so as not to "hurt" business owners. You can vote and have democracy, but only if Democrats continue to have "super-delegates" that overrule your vote. They are afraid Trump will start war and yet overwhelming vote for increased military spending. MLK considered this type of "white liberal" to be his worst opponent, because they would smile and shake your hand as they stabbed you in the back; at least you knew that the conservatives didn't like you, whereas Democrats would work with you on developing policy only to back out last minute once elected and expected to follow through.
The cost of housing and basic needs like food were a particularly strong concern for MLK, and those costs provide a great example of how the economic system disadvantages blacks and keeps them in poverty. On page 123 he describes how the system works:
These economic problems only serve to create a cycle that keeps the poor in a state of poverty with little hope of getting out, which further feeds racism. MLK argued that a radical transformation of society was required for us to break this cycle. As he says in his book (page 142):
Is there evidence that MLK would support a Green Party, or some type of "third party" political solution? MLK points out there are several paths to currently-untapped economic power, and lists that workers' unions and community organizations including churches are important allies. However, he also points out that being involved in politics is another source of power in the community and that it is important for poverty activists to be involved in democracy and bringing attention to issues. On page 158, he specifically endorses independent parties:
So what does MLK's political vision look like? His goal is to end poverty, so what policies are best to support that vision? We see elements of more leftist ideology in his statements about an economy that puts people over profits. Right-wing ideology generally assumes that the profit motive is the most powerful engine of change and therefore puts trust in the "free market" as the goal. Everything is about small government, minimal regulations in order to "encourage competition" in the market, which is really just individuals competing for profits. MLK however sees a vision where we democratically control our economy and put taking care of people as our primary goal rather than obtaining profits. MLK quotes on page 172 from Henry George's 1879 book "Progress and Poverty" (a national bestseller at the time it was published that heavily influenced the later progressive and socialist movements in America, and a book on my todo list to read eventually):
UBI has a complex history, but interestingly enough there was one point in time in the 1960s where it seemed almost inevitable. Even conservatives like Nixon initially supported a UBI as a way of "fixing" capitalism, and from what I understand was on the verge of supporting it in Congress. However, an adviser talked him out of it until more research was done, and Watergate was to follow shortly afterward, and so the issue was unfortunately never revisited. The fact that Nixon and many politicians were supportive (or at least entertained the idea of supporting) UBI shows how far right-ward both major parties have drifted. However, the movement for UBI does seem to be increasing in recent years.
The Green platform (Section IV.D) calls for universal basic income:
Ultimately, MLK argues that since we now live in the "world house" (the global economy), we must recognize that the fate of all nations are now intertwined and we must also combat racism, poverty, and militarism abroad and not just at home. He argues we should spend some of our vast resources at raising other nations out of poverty, that we should withdraw our support and capital from nations and governments that continue to push racism (such as South Africa's apartheid system that existed at the time), and investigate how to use nonviolent methods at a global level to end warfare.
One of the Green Party's "Four Pillars" is Peace. Greens support ending wars, ending weapons arms races, and working toward diplomatic solutions when at all possible. The Green New Deal calls for drastic reductions in military spending (particularly by closing military bases throughout the world, many of which exist in allied countries far from warzones that are unnecessary for defense and serve only to occupy countries as if they were colonies and prop up the military-industrial complex) in favor of spending the money at home on social programs and infrastructure.
MLK says on page 196-197:
Compare this vision with the Green Party's economic vision from the 2016 Green platform:
However, when you start listening to the full speeches and not simply the snippets they play in school and documentaries, you catch glimpses of a wider philosophy. Sure, equality was a huge part of MLK's dream, he was indeed fighting for racial equality and a just system. However, MLK himself admitted that racial inequality was not the whole story; there was also a huge economic inequality component. He spoke of the need to address poverty before we could really tackle racial inequality. He also spoke of the need to establish democracy with real representation to address inequality, and how militarism and colonialism around the world was both a threat to democracy and allowed the cycle of poverty to continue. Those were dimensions of the argument that I was not as familiar with.
After seeing references to this on social media, it became clear I needed to go to the source and learn as much as I could about what MLK actually stood for, and not simply the media-friendly narrative. I picked up a copy of "Where Do We Go From Here?: Chaos or Community", which was published in 1968 as the last book written by MLK before his assassination. It's not a very long read (about 200 pages), but really shows just how eloquent MLK was and how much he believed in nonviolent resistance as a way to influence society.
While MLK's first goal is obviously to end racial inequality, he quickly moves into the need to address economic inequality. He saw economic inequality and militarism as a root cause of racism, that the three were inseparably related and so must be tackled together by coalitions of both blacks and whites in order to effect real long-lasting change.
He spent a significant amount of time in the early chapters outlining how the economic system and the government works against black people. He described how more blacks were deployed to war in Vietnam than whites, how blacks were denied access to higher education because it wasn't affordable, how blacks paid higher rent for subpar housing compared to whites, how most blacks held "menial" low-paying jobs, the unemployment rate was nearly twice what it was for whites, and few elected officials were black. He felt that much of the racism was actually economic racism, that many whites had poor opinions of blacks because of a conception that blacks were poor and uneducated. He was convinced that tackling the sources of economic inequality would go a long way to elevating the status of blacks in society and countering such racial stereotypes, and that more blacks needed to be involved in the political system.
He described that blacks since the end of slavery faced economic disadvantage in the US. As he put it on page 84:
It was like freeing a man who had been unjustly imprisoned for years, and on discovering his innocence sending him out with no bus fare to get home, no suit to cover his body, no financial compensation to atone for his long years of incarceration and to help him get a sound footing in society; sending him out only with the assertion: "Now you are free". What greater injustice could society perpetrate?He describes poverty as "white America's most urgent challenge today", and describes how we spend so much money on warfare and exploring space but cannot commit even a small fraction of it to eradicating poverty and blight in the poverty-stricken areas of cities. In fact, MLK is very explicit about what he wants on page 95:
The white liberal must affirm that absolute justice for the Negro simply means, in an Aristotelian sense, that the Negro must have "his due". There is nothing abstract about this. It is as concrete as having a good job, a good education, a decent house and a share of power.What struck me as interesting about this excerpt and the surrounding text was how long MLK talked about the "white liberal". He specifically complained that many white liberals that considered themselves allies of the civil rights movement would support only gradual change for blacks (gradually increasing wages, gradually integrating the schools, gradually improving housing, etc.), and he was concerned that these white liberals did not truly understand the plight of black people. They cannot wait for things to be gradually phased in; asking for the poor to wait a bit longer to afford food or decent housing or an affordable education shows either a lack of understanding of how serious the problem is, or exposes the apathy at creating a truly just society. Either way, such "allies" were not true allies and in many cases were hindrances to the movement.
This argument reminds me a lot of today's Democratic party that on the surface says it is for all of these wonderful liberal progressive ideas, but then doesn't back them up. They support universal access to healthcare, except only as expensive employer-provided insurance (leaving out those between jobs, or not working full time, and having expensive premiums and copays and deductibles even if you do) and not as a national single payer system that establishes it as a right. They support a $15 minimum wage, but want to phase it in slowly in the year 2025 so as not to "hurt" business owners. You can vote and have democracy, but only if Democrats continue to have "super-delegates" that overrule your vote. They are afraid Trump will start war and yet overwhelming vote for increased military spending. MLK considered this type of "white liberal" to be his worst opponent, because they would smile and shake your hand as they stabbed you in the back; at least you knew that the conservatives didn't like you, whereas Democrats would work with you on developing policy only to back out last minute once elected and expected to follow through.
The cost of housing and basic needs like food were a particularly strong concern for MLK, and those costs provide a great example of how the economic system disadvantages blacks and keeps them in poverty. On page 123 he describes how the system works:
... my neighbors pay more rent in the substandard slums of Lawndale than the whites must pay for modern apartments in the suburbs. ... The situation is much the same for consumer goods, purchase prices on homes and a variety of other services. Consumer items range from five to twelve cents higher in the ghetto stores than in the suburban stores, both run by the same supermarket chains; and numerous stores in the ghetto have been the subject of community protests against the sale of spoiled meats and vegetables. This exploitation is possible because so many of the residents of the ghetto have no personal means of transportation. It is a vicious cycle. You can't get a job because you are poorly educated, and you must depend on public welfare to feed your children; but if you receive public aid in Chicago, you cannot own property, not even an automobile, so you are condemned to the jobs and shops which are closest to your home. Once confined to this isolated community, one no longer participates in a free economy, but is subject to price-fixing and wholesale robbery by many of the merchants of the area.I think this is a very insightful paragraph that illustrates how capitalism works against the poor. Essentially, the "free market" people like to go on about collapses in poor areas. If you cannot afford a car and there is no good public transportation system, you must find a job nearby and shop at stores nearby. When the owners realize you have no other choices, they can price gouge (that "12 cents higher" translates to around $1 more per item in 2017 dollars due to inflation; so imagine every item in the store being $1 more than they are now, it adds up! especially when you are on minimum wage and every dollar counts), leading to much larger prices in the poor areas than surrounding areas. If you cannot afford transportation, then you must rent or buy a house near your job, and again you will be price gouged and pay a higher rent or higher sale price than suburban whites that can "shop around". Add on top of it that banks often charge much higher interest rates on loans for poorer people with lower wages, and poor blacks end up paying much much higher rates than whites for much lower quality products. It is also true that welfare and other programs require you to own very little; I was briefly on Medicaid and was required to submit information about my bank accounts and value of any property including a car; if the total was above a certain small amount, you were denied assistance. If you save up at all when you don't have a good job, you stop qualifying for aid and fall right back into poverty, keeping up the cycle. For suburban whites that don't understand these problems, it is easy for these economic problems to develop into a racial stereotype and feed racism.
These economic problems only serve to create a cycle that keeps the poor in a state of poverty with little hope of getting out, which further feeds racism. MLK argued that a radical transformation of society was required for us to break this cycle. As he says in his book (page 142):
For the evils of racism, poverty and militarism to die, a new set of values must be born. Our economy must become more person-centered than property- or profit-centered. Our government must depend more on its moral power than on its military power. Let us, therefore, not think of our movement as one that that seeks to integrate the Negro into all the existing values of American society. Let us be those creative dissenters who will call our beloved nation to a higher destiny...In other words, we shouldn't seek to be part of a morally corrupt system, but work to reform and overthrow such a system in favor of one that puts people first. He specifically calls for the development of economic power among the poor via nonviolent resistance in order to force the system to change. The Green Party's slogan of "people and planet over profits" is an echo of what MLK says here, and it is no coincidence that the Green Party's Green New Deal includes an economic bill of rights to tackle poverty while also including provisions to end militarism by cutting our bloated imperialistic military budget. Some of the early state Green Parties (before the national Green Party US was founded) were founded by veterans of the civil rights movement, and so in a real way I think the Green Party is a political successor to MLK's vision.
Is there evidence that MLK would support a Green Party, or some type of "third party" political solution? MLK points out there are several paths to currently-untapped economic power, and lists that workers' unions and community organizations including churches are important allies. However, he also points out that being involved in politics is another source of power in the community and that it is important for poverty activists to be involved in democracy and bringing attention to issues. On page 158, he specifically endorses independent parties:
We will have to learn to refuse crumbs from the big-city machines and steadfastly demand a fair share of the loaf. When the machine politicians demur, we must be prepared to act in unity and throw our support to such independent parties or reform wings of the major parties as are prepared to take our demands seriously and fight for them vigorously. This is political freedom; this is political maturity expressing our aroused and determined new spirit to be treated as equals in all aspects of life. The future of the deep structural changes we seek will not be found in the decaying political machines.MLK was not only supportive but encouraged people to stand together unified behind new alliances to break the "decaying political machines". While some today might say the reform wings could work, we've seen in the 50 years since MLK that reform efforts in the major parties consistently fail (in fact, such reform efforts have been unable to even slow the rightward drift of both parties, much less pull them to the left on policy), and MLK himself even expresses disappointment at the number of Democratic politicians that attended the marches with him saying they supported civil rights that then later turned against political movements once elected and voted against putting civil rights into law. Based on his statements in this chapter, I believe MLK would warn us to be wary of establishment "machine" politicians pretending to be our friends, and encourage us to support "independent parties" like the Green Party to demand changes rather than continuing to support major party "machines" that resist reform.
So what does MLK's political vision look like? His goal is to end poverty, so what policies are best to support that vision? We see elements of more leftist ideology in his statements about an economy that puts people over profits. Right-wing ideology generally assumes that the profit motive is the most powerful engine of change and therefore puts trust in the "free market" as the goal. Everything is about small government, minimal regulations in order to "encourage competition" in the market, which is really just individuals competing for profits. MLK however sees a vision where we democratically control our economy and put taking care of people as our primary goal rather than obtaining profits. MLK quotes on page 172 from Henry George's 1879 book "Progress and Poverty" (a national bestseller at the time it was published that heavily influenced the later progressive and socialist movements in America, and a book on my todo list to read eventually):
The fact is that the work which improves the condition of mankind, the work which extends knowledge and increases power and enriches literature, and elevates thought, is not done to secure a living. It is not the work of slaves, driven to their task either by the lash of a master or by animal necessities. It is the work of men who perform it for their own sake, and not that they get more to eat or drink, or wear, or display. In a state of society where want is abolished, work of this sort could be enormously increased.In other words, the creative work that improves our lives and improves civilization cannot be done by economic slaves struggling to have their basic needs met. We could all have much more fulfilling jobs and lives in general if we weren't under the constant stress of poverty. To illustrate the problem, he also quotes an Asian writer on page 182:
You call your thousand material devices "labor-saving machinery", yet you are forever "busy". With the multiplying of your machinery you grow increasingly fatigued, anxious, nervous, dissatisfied. Whatever you have, you want more; and wherever you are you want to go somewhere else... your devices are neither time-saving nor soul-saving machinery. They are so many sharp spurs which urge you to invent more machinery and to do more business.If we want to work toward a better society, we must first end "want", or poverty, and begin to use science and technology to improve the human condition rather than improve profits. To this end, MLK describes a number of policies to combat poverty. Perhaps most surprisingly, after an analysis on how piecemeal social programs (housing programs, educational spending, etc.) have not been successful because of a lack of integration among the programs and a lack of government funding support, MLK makes the following statement on page 171:
I am now convinced that the simplest approach will prove to be the most effective -- the solution to poverty is to abolish it directly by a now widely-discussed measure: the guaranteed income.The guaranteed income is today sometimes known by the term "universal basic income" (UBI), but the goal is the same. We guarantee every American, regardless social or economic status, a basic fixed income. The income can be given directly to Americans (either as a so-called "negative income tax" or via a check similar to social security), or it can come in the form of a "jobs program" that ensures full employment, but either way, we guarantee every American has enough income to end poverty. It isn't hard to imagine this with modern technology; money is a proxy for distributing goods we produce (such as food and clothing), and if technology allows us to produce more than enough for every American (which it certainly does! I have read estimates that 40% of the food grown in American is thrown away; we're producing more than enough food, it's just not making its way to all Americans due to inefficient capitalist pursuit of profits), the problem is more of distribution than production. MLK argues exactly this: we must fix our economic system to improve distribution of supplies to people, and that in itself will put more money into the system and grow the economy toward more and better jobs that are more fulfilling than today's poverty work. As he writes, "The curse of poverty has no justification in our age... The time has come for us to civilize ourselves by the total, direct and immediate abolition of poverty." On page 199, he reiterates: "There is nothing except shortsightedness to prevent us from guaranteeing an annual minimum -- and livable -- income for every American family."
UBI has a complex history, but interestingly enough there was one point in time in the 1960s where it seemed almost inevitable. Even conservatives like Nixon initially supported a UBI as a way of "fixing" capitalism, and from what I understand was on the verge of supporting it in Congress. However, an adviser talked him out of it until more research was done, and Watergate was to follow shortly afterward, and so the issue was unfortunately never revisited. The fact that Nixon and many politicians were supportive (or at least entertained the idea of supporting) UBI shows how far right-ward both major parties have drifted. However, the movement for UBI does seem to be increasing in recent years.
The Green platform (Section IV.D) calls for universal basic income:
We call for a universal basic income (sometimes called a guaranteed income, negative income tax, citizen's income, or citizen dividend). This would go to every adult regardless of health, employment, or marital status, in order to minimize government bureaucracy and intrusiveness into people's lives. The amount should be sufficient so that anyone who is unemployed can afford basic food and shelter. State or local governments should supplement that amount from local revenues where the cost of living is high.Note that Greens also support public works programs that would provide full employment. There is must to do in overhauling and updating our infrastructure: transitioning to renewable energy sources, rebuilding roads, water systems, etc., so there are plenty of jobs available. No one should be unable to find some type of useful work, and we can guarantee that with a public jobs program if the private sector cannot create such useful jobs.
Ultimately, MLK argues that since we now live in the "world house" (the global economy), we must recognize that the fate of all nations are now intertwined and we must also combat racism, poverty, and militarism abroad and not just at home. He argues we should spend some of our vast resources at raising other nations out of poverty, that we should withdraw our support and capital from nations and governments that continue to push racism (such as South Africa's apartheid system that existed at the time), and investigate how to use nonviolent methods at a global level to end warfare.
We have ancient habits to deal with, vast structures of power, indescribably complicated problems to solve. But unless we abdicate our humanity altogether and succumb to fear and impotence in the presence of the weapons we have ourselves created, it is as possible and as urgent to put an end to war and violence between nations as it is to put an end to poverty and racial injustice. ... We must shift the arms race into a 'peace race'. If we have the will and determination to mount such a peace offensive...MLK sees the problems of racism, poverty, and warfare as all stemming from an attitude of military and economic colonialism. Colonialism - and really capitalism in general - sees the world in terms of classes, of groups of people that are somehow "better" or "superior" than others, whether it be because of race, religion, or some other reason. We cannot end racism and poverty fully without confronting the reasons for violence and warfare. They must all be solved together for a real solution.
One of the Green Party's "Four Pillars" is Peace. Greens support ending wars, ending weapons arms races, and working toward diplomatic solutions when at all possible. The Green New Deal calls for drastic reductions in military spending (particularly by closing military bases throughout the world, many of which exist in allied countries far from warzones that are unnecessary for defense and serve only to occupy countries as if they were colonies and prop up the military-industrial complex) in favor of spending the money at home on social programs and infrastructure.
MLK says on page 196-197:
We must rapidly begin the shift from a "thing"-oriented society to a "person"-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.He is advocating for a new economic system that realizes the promise of democracy, and rejects more "classical" views of government, in particular, the struggle of capitalism versus communism. On page 197, he goes into more detail:
We must honestly admit capitalism has often left a gulf between superfluous wealth and abject poverty, has created conditions permitting necessities to be taken from the many to give luxuries to the few, and has encouraged smallhearted men to become cold and conscienceless so that ... they are unmoved by suffering, poverty-stricken humanity. The profit motive, when it is the sole basis of an economic system, encourages a cutthroat competition and selfish ambition that inspire men to be more I-centered than thou-centered. Equally, communism reduces men to a cog in the wheel of the state. The communist may object, saying that in Marxian theory the state is an "interim reality" that will "wither away" when the classless society emerges. True -- in theory; but it is also true that, while the state lasts, it is an end to itself. Man is a means to that end. He has no inalienable rights... [traditional capitalism and classical communism] Each represents a partial truth. Capitalism fails to see the truth in collectivism. Communism fails to see the truth in individualism. Capitalism fails to realize that life is social. Communism fails to realize that life is personal. The good and just society is neither the thesis of capitalism or the antithesis of communism, but a socially conscious democracy which reconciles the truths of individualism and collectivism.A true democracy that shares power equally among all its citizens is the most good and just society; any other form of government provides an unequal power distribution (either putting too much power into private business or the state government) and leads to the economic and racial inequality we see. It is more democracy that we should be advocating for, rather than being specifically anti-capitalist or anti-communist.
Compare this vision with the Green Party's economic vision from the 2016 Green platform:
The Green Party seeks to build an alternative economic system based on ecology and decentralization of power, an alternative that rejects both the capitalist system that maintains private ownership over almost all production as well as the state-socialist system that assumes control over industries without democratic, local decision making. We believe the old models of capitalism (private ownership of production) and state socialism (state ownership of production) are not ecologically sound, socially just, or democratic and that both contain built-in structures that advance injustices.
Instead we will build an economy based on large-scale green public works, municipalization, and workplace and community democracy. Some call this decentralized system 'ecological socialism,' 'communalism,' or the 'cooperative commonwealth,' but whatever the terminology, we believe it will help end labor exploitation, environmental exploitation, and racial, gender, and wealth inequality and bring about economic and social justice due to the positive effects of democratic decision making.
Production is best for people and planet when democratically owned and operated by those who do the work and those most affected by production decisions. This model of worker and community empowerment will ensure that decisions that greatly affect our lives are made in the interests of our communities, not at the whim of centralized power structures of state administrators or of capitalist CEOs and distant boards of directors. Small, democratically run enterprises, when embedded in and accountable to our communities, will make more ecologically sound decisions in materials sourcing, waste disposal, recycling, reuse, and more. Democratic, diverse ownership of production would decentralize power in the workplace, which would in turn decentralize economic power more broadly.
The Green platform echoes MLK's visions for a more good and just society based on democracy in government and business, and I believe he would highly approve of it.
In order to switch to that democratic system that is more just, MLK describes the need to expand our rights as citizens to the economic domain, as history has shown political rights alone are insufficient to fight poverty due to inequality of power.
Having read the book, I was surprised to see how much MLK talked about poverty and war since that wasn't emphasized in my classes growing up. I especially was not exposed to MLK's proposed solutions to the problems such as universal basic income and more spending on housing and education programs beyond simple racial integration. MLK was essentially a democratic socialist in philosophy, though I'm not sure he used that term directly. Given the legacy of the "Red Scare" and any discussion of socialism and communism, and an almost patriotic support of unfettered capitalism, it isn't entirely surprising to me that this aspect of MLK has been suppressed in our public discourse.
So I described a lot of MLK's philosophy on racism and poverty, and how much of what he says overlaps with Green Party values. But how do we put those ideas into action? MLK described the action as nonviolent resistance, and used it with great success in the 1960s. I'll look more at nonviolent resistance in my next blog post.
In order to switch to that democratic system that is more just, MLK describes the need to expand our rights as citizens to the economic domain, as history has shown political rights alone are insufficient to fight poverty due to inequality of power.
...the concept is emerging that beneficiaries of welfare measures are not beggars but citizens endowed with rights defined by law. ... From a variety of different directions, the strands are drawing together for a contemporary social and economic Bill of Rights to supplement the Constitution's political Bill of Rights.The Green Party's Green New Deal actually calls it's first pillar an "Economic Bill of Rights", which includes a right to full employment for all that want a job (via a green jobs program), a living wage, affordable housing, democratically-run public utilities, single payer healthcare, tuition-free public education, and more, most of which MLK had cited at one point or another in the book as being important goals to end poverty. In particular, MLK wrote that affordable housing and education likely must be addressed first before poverty can end, and in fact on page 214 says:
Housing is too important to be left to private enterprise with only minor government effort to shape policy. We need the equivalent of a Medicare for housing.A "Medicare for housing" is an interesting phrase I've never heard before. He doesn't explain what is meant by this term in much detail, but since Medicare ensures the elderly all have access to healthcare, I assume he means an assurance that all poor have access to housing, either via vouchers (like Section 8 housing) or public housing projects.
Having read the book, I was surprised to see how much MLK talked about poverty and war since that wasn't emphasized in my classes growing up. I especially was not exposed to MLK's proposed solutions to the problems such as universal basic income and more spending on housing and education programs beyond simple racial integration. MLK was essentially a democratic socialist in philosophy, though I'm not sure he used that term directly. Given the legacy of the "Red Scare" and any discussion of socialism and communism, and an almost patriotic support of unfettered capitalism, it isn't entirely surprising to me that this aspect of MLK has been suppressed in our public discourse.
So I described a lot of MLK's philosophy on racism and poverty, and how much of what he says overlaps with Green Party values. But how do we put those ideas into action? MLK described the action as nonviolent resistance, and used it with great success in the 1960s. I'll look more at nonviolent resistance in my next blog post.
Sunday, December 10, 2017
Neoliberalism and why Republicans and Democrats are so similar
A world where profit is more important than people, where the rights of corporations trump the rights of individuals, where corporations use their influence on government to turn police forces into private security that focuses on protecting corporate assets. While I've long suspected these things were true, I didn't understand these are the results of neoliberalism until I read Noam Chomsky's "Profit Over People: Neoliberalism and Global Order".
When commentators refer to "neoliberalism" they are referring to the idea that corporations are the most important aspect of society. The word comes from "liberalism" (or more specifically "classical liberalism") which is the set of economic ideas perhaps best articulated by Adam Smith in "The Wealth of Nations", a book widely viewed as a classic on how free markets and capitalism work. Smith's work is where terms like "the invisible hand" come from; Smith argued that truly free markets were able to regulate themselves and would always bend toward correct actions. Smith however did acknowledge that monopolies and other economic conditions would prevent truly free markets and some limited government to protect against that was necessary, which most proponents conveniently leave off.
"Neoliberalism", with neo being a prefix that means "new", is literally the "new liberalism", a modern offshoot of those ideas. Government is seen as a necessary evil that must be kept minimal, taxes must all be kept minimal and never applied to capital, and the private sector and "invisible hand" of the market are the most powerful forces that must be trusted to work out in the long run. In other words, the role of government is to protect the rights of business in order to maintain a free market that is safe for capital to invest. The theory is that a free market full of competition will eventually stabilize and bring valuable goods at reasonable prices and pay reasonable wages, and this free market process is "automatic", meaning that government need not and should not ever intervene. Smith's work was in the late 1700s, a very different world before industrial automation when most of the world's population were farmers. Neoliberalism is effectively the attempt at carrying his ideas into the new industrialized (and now global) economy, and Chomsky's book does a great job at showing how this policy has been disastrous and counter to democratic ideals.
Neoliberalism has been on the upswing in the United States for decades, but probably most noticeably became public policy during the Reagan era. The Adam Smith Institute proudly provides both a good description of neoliberal policy and a boast that they have influenced such policy decisions since the 1970s, to give an example. Since then, Republican and Democratic presidents and Congresses have pushed for free market "invisible hand" solutions to problems. The parties disagree slightly on implementation -- with Republicans tending to lean completely toward "market-based solutions" while Democrats acknowledge some small "safety nets" might be necessary -- but both overwhelmingly agree that private business and not government needs to fix problems. We see this as members of both political parties have de-regulated banks and businesses (they call it "red tape"), cut funding for social programs and benefits, and pushed to privatize many services including utilities like water and even social security. This idea that capital -- investing in privately-owned businesses that control resources and sell to others for profit -- is superior to any other economic model and will always automatically lead to solutions of public problems is exactly the definition of capitalism.
If you don't believe how similar the two major parties are on neoliberalism, try to ask most politicians on either side about the free market or capitalism. Both Republicans and Democrats loudly trumpet private for-profit insurances as the model for healthcare, and reject any sort of publicly-funded model like single payer medicare for all, or even simply a public option to compete with private insurance. (Their differences on healthcare really only come down to whether government can require by law people to buy insurance, otherwise their plans are effectively the same). Nancy Pelosi, Democratic House leader, loudly proclaimed "we're capitalists, and that's just the way it is" when asked at a recent town hall. Bill Clinton worked with Republicans on many reforms during the 1990s, including de-regulation of banks and capital as well as "reform" of social programs like welfare (that lead to those programs being ineffective, allowing politicians to later use that as "evidence" the programs don't work and scrap them all-together). Even today, Democrats' arguments the GOP tax reform plan are mostly about not following proper Senate procedure.. We have to make taxes lower for business and capital to let the free market, is what the GOP argues, and Democrats largely agree with them. Notice how much even Democrats scream "It will raise your taxes!" -- further promoting "tax phobia", teaching citizens to be afraid of taxes and treat them as "theft" -- rather than fighting for a program that raises taxes on the wealthy to ensure a fair and just economic system for all. They're not arguing for a fair system, they're arguing that Republican voters and donors are reaping the benefits instead of their own Democratic voters and donors. Either way, it is unjust since someone most "lose" in order for another to "win" and make profits in such a "free market" capitalist system.
The "invisible hand" of the market will fix everything and government should keep interference to a minimum, according to both major parties. They only disagree on the best way to encourage a free market, not the concept of a market-based solution itself. Contrast the Green Party's platform that explicitly says:
When was the last time you saw a politician saying natural resources and industry should be democratically-controlled by communities rather than owned and operated by capitalists? Unless you've seen a Green Party candidate speaking recently (or maybe a DSA-backed candidate), you probably have never seen this from major party candidates. We don't have a real debate on economic policy in this country because leaders and most establishment candidates of both parties are largely in agreement on such issues. Neoliberalism has infiltrated most of our discussion to the point that many accept its tenants as "common sense" or "obvious" because they've never heard an alternative. They almost treat the "invisible hand" and "free market" as a religion, that "free market competition" doctrine cannot be wrong and any questioning of it is blasphemy.
So neoliberalism has as its base a very capitalist-focused, free market economy with minimal government and taxes. But that isn't all. This focus on capitalism and privately-held resources has led to the problems we see in our government and foreign policy.
In order to expand profits and capital, businesses must continue to expand claim more resources (buy more private property). Naturally, this leads to businesses buying other businesses to get their resources, and leads to monopolies. Of course, in today's world, it is easy to hop on a plane or set up an electronic bank account around the world, so monopolies are not restricted to their home country. It is now easy for big business to "invade" other countries and attempt to gain private control of the resources of that country as well as the home country. They can do so economically, but it's really easy if they can use another source of power: military.
Viewed through this lens, United States intervention in other countries since World War 2 makes much more sense. George W. Bush is famous for describing the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as "bringing democracy" to the people, but that never entirely made sense as presidents for decades have been close allies with very authoritarian regimes. We fund and provide weapons to Saudi Arabia, for example, despite the country being a royal dictatorship with some of the worst civil rights violations in the world. Why?
"Democracy" is a euphemism for neoliberals. They don't mean to bring literal democracy -- as in people directly governing themselves through popular vote -- or freedom, but rather to import American-style neoliberal free markets. As Chomsky put it, we're not making the world safe for democracy but making the world safe for capital, much as Adam Smith argued in his book that capital needed to be safe for a free market to continue to function. In some sense, the fight was for freedom, but freedom of business capital, not individual freedoms. When you see that, it becomes clear why many "allies" of the United States are among the worst human rights offenders in the world while we demonize other countries. Our "allies" are ones willing to do business with us (like Saudi Arabia selling us our oil addiction), while our "enemies" are ones that are economic rivals (or simply more socialist states uninterested in cooperating with privately-controlled American corporations). Notice tensions are cooling with rival countries like Russia as they become more capitalist and open to American businesses and capital, incidentally. Of course, we utilize any economic rivals as a source of anxiety to push for more military and defense spending, which itself is typically handled by privately-owned military industrial "contractors that profit from further spending. The spending that generates military profits must come from somewhere, and so taxes are raised, wages are lowered, to ensure the nation keeps spending while the capitalists continue to profit.
"Free trade agreements" are all about securing favorable conditions for corporations and capital. Since agreements like NAFTA have been signed, we've seen a shrinking middle class with lower salaries and benefits, and a growing poverty class with no safety net, as corporate taxes are cut to help fund offshoring of those corporations to generate even larger capital and profits. Not only that, but in the process, we've granted corporation more and more "human rights", allowing corporations to sue governments for profit loss (arguing for example that social programs prevent them from making as much profit as they could have) and further weaken our social safety nets. We've also empowered the president to make such binding agreements without consulting Congress, further centralizing economic power in the hands of a few individuals rather than the people. De-regulation and trade agreements have effectively left corporations with more rights than individuals. Again, leaders of both parties have generally championed free trade agreements and their effects, with only a few such as Bernie Sanders speaking out against them.
To enforce trade agreements and business property rights, we see our police forces drift toward "police states" that become more concerned with protecting private property than actually defending citizens against injustice. A well-known recent event was the DAPL protests, in which peaceful protesters were violently attacked by police forces who considered themselves "defending" the property on behalf of the pipeline that supposedly owned the land (nevermind that the protesters were largely Native Americans that had rightful ownership of that land under treaties with the United States - again, our police and military make the world safe for business and capital, not individual human rights).
While Republicans are often detestable for socially-backwards views, we must remember that Democrats usually support the same neoliberal policies Republicans do. Such policies lead to massive wealth inequalities that elevate a select few into "rich" status at the expense of pushing large amounts of Americans down into poverty, all while reducing our individual freedoms, weakening our democracy, and transforming our country into a police state more interested in protecting capital than human civil rights. Unfortunately Republicans winning elections is often a backlash to such policies hurting the average American, much like how Democrats win after average Americans continue to suffer under the same neoliberal Republican policies. Both sides get to bash each other over the head with the negative effects every 4-8 years and win in landslides because people are angry and yet feel trapped in the two party system. In effect, both parties get to "have their cake and eat it too" as they implement neoliberal policies that profit themselves and simply wait for the next cycle to sweep them into power for even more profits.
The way to combat this is not to support either major party, but to fight the entire neoliberal establishment as a whole. I believe the best way to do so is build a new political party and movement that focuses on people and planet over profits, that values human and individual rights, that believes corporations are not entitled to make money no matter what. A party that acknowledges that natural resources are precious, and their extraction and use deeply impacts the entire community if not region or whole world, and so we need more bottom-up democratic structures managing those resources rather than top-down corporate dictatorships. The Green Party is exactly that party, and I invite you to join in building the party rather than propping up either of our current major neoliberal parties. And if you want to learn more about neoliberalism and how today's world was built by both major parties, Chomsky's book is an excellent introduction to the subject.
When commentators refer to "neoliberalism" they are referring to the idea that corporations are the most important aspect of society. The word comes from "liberalism" (or more specifically "classical liberalism") which is the set of economic ideas perhaps best articulated by Adam Smith in "The Wealth of Nations", a book widely viewed as a classic on how free markets and capitalism work. Smith's work is where terms like "the invisible hand" come from; Smith argued that truly free markets were able to regulate themselves and would always bend toward correct actions. Smith however did acknowledge that monopolies and other economic conditions would prevent truly free markets and some limited government to protect against that was necessary, which most proponents conveniently leave off.
"Neoliberalism", with neo being a prefix that means "new", is literally the "new liberalism", a modern offshoot of those ideas. Government is seen as a necessary evil that must be kept minimal, taxes must all be kept minimal and never applied to capital, and the private sector and "invisible hand" of the market are the most powerful forces that must be trusted to work out in the long run. In other words, the role of government is to protect the rights of business in order to maintain a free market that is safe for capital to invest. The theory is that a free market full of competition will eventually stabilize and bring valuable goods at reasonable prices and pay reasonable wages, and this free market process is "automatic", meaning that government need not and should not ever intervene. Smith's work was in the late 1700s, a very different world before industrial automation when most of the world's population were farmers. Neoliberalism is effectively the attempt at carrying his ideas into the new industrialized (and now global) economy, and Chomsky's book does a great job at showing how this policy has been disastrous and counter to democratic ideals.
Neoliberalism has been on the upswing in the United States for decades, but probably most noticeably became public policy during the Reagan era. The Adam Smith Institute proudly provides both a good description of neoliberal policy and a boast that they have influenced such policy decisions since the 1970s, to give an example. Since then, Republican and Democratic presidents and Congresses have pushed for free market "invisible hand" solutions to problems. The parties disagree slightly on implementation -- with Republicans tending to lean completely toward "market-based solutions" while Democrats acknowledge some small "safety nets" might be necessary -- but both overwhelmingly agree that private business and not government needs to fix problems. We see this as members of both political parties have de-regulated banks and businesses (they call it "red tape"), cut funding for social programs and benefits, and pushed to privatize many services including utilities like water and even social security. This idea that capital -- investing in privately-owned businesses that control resources and sell to others for profit -- is superior to any other economic model and will always automatically lead to solutions of public problems is exactly the definition of capitalism.
If you don't believe how similar the two major parties are on neoliberalism, try to ask most politicians on either side about the free market or capitalism. Both Republicans and Democrats loudly trumpet private for-profit insurances as the model for healthcare, and reject any sort of publicly-funded model like single payer medicare for all, or even simply a public option to compete with private insurance. (Their differences on healthcare really only come down to whether government can require by law people to buy insurance, otherwise their plans are effectively the same). Nancy Pelosi, Democratic House leader, loudly proclaimed "we're capitalists, and that's just the way it is" when asked at a recent town hall. Bill Clinton worked with Republicans on many reforms during the 1990s, including de-regulation of banks and capital as well as "reform" of social programs like welfare (that lead to those programs being ineffective, allowing politicians to later use that as "evidence" the programs don't work and scrap them all-together). Even today, Democrats' arguments the GOP tax reform plan are mostly about not following proper Senate procedure.. We have to make taxes lower for business and capital to let the free market, is what the GOP argues, and Democrats largely agree with them. Notice how much even Democrats scream "It will raise your taxes!" -- further promoting "tax phobia", teaching citizens to be afraid of taxes and treat them as "theft" -- rather than fighting for a program that raises taxes on the wealthy to ensure a fair and just economic system for all. They're not arguing for a fair system, they're arguing that Republican voters and donors are reaping the benefits instead of their own Democratic voters and donors. Either way, it is unjust since someone most "lose" in order for another to "win" and make profits in such a "free market" capitalist system.
The "invisible hand" of the market will fix everything and government should keep interference to a minimum, according to both major parties. They only disagree on the best way to encourage a free market, not the concept of a market-based solution itself. Contrast the Green Party's platform that explicitly says:
The Green Party seeks to build an alternative economic system based on ecology and decentralization of power, an alternative that rejects both the capitalist system that maintains private ownership over almost all production as well as the state-socialist system that assumes control over industries without democratic, local decision making. We believe the old models of capitalism (private ownership of production) and state socialism (state ownership of production) are not ecologically sound, socially just, or democratic and that both contain built-in structures that advance injustices.
When was the last time you saw a politician saying natural resources and industry should be democratically-controlled by communities rather than owned and operated by capitalists? Unless you've seen a Green Party candidate speaking recently (or maybe a DSA-backed candidate), you probably have never seen this from major party candidates. We don't have a real debate on economic policy in this country because leaders and most establishment candidates of both parties are largely in agreement on such issues. Neoliberalism has infiltrated most of our discussion to the point that many accept its tenants as "common sense" or "obvious" because they've never heard an alternative. They almost treat the "invisible hand" and "free market" as a religion, that "free market competition" doctrine cannot be wrong and any questioning of it is blasphemy.
So neoliberalism has as its base a very capitalist-focused, free market economy with minimal government and taxes. But that isn't all. This focus on capitalism and privately-held resources has led to the problems we see in our government and foreign policy.
In order to expand profits and capital, businesses must continue to expand claim more resources (buy more private property). Naturally, this leads to businesses buying other businesses to get their resources, and leads to monopolies. Of course, in today's world, it is easy to hop on a plane or set up an electronic bank account around the world, so monopolies are not restricted to their home country. It is now easy for big business to "invade" other countries and attempt to gain private control of the resources of that country as well as the home country. They can do so economically, but it's really easy if they can use another source of power: military.
Viewed through this lens, United States intervention in other countries since World War 2 makes much more sense. George W. Bush is famous for describing the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as "bringing democracy" to the people, but that never entirely made sense as presidents for decades have been close allies with very authoritarian regimes. We fund and provide weapons to Saudi Arabia, for example, despite the country being a royal dictatorship with some of the worst civil rights violations in the world. Why?
"Democracy" is a euphemism for neoliberals. They don't mean to bring literal democracy -- as in people directly governing themselves through popular vote -- or freedom, but rather to import American-style neoliberal free markets. As Chomsky put it, we're not making the world safe for democracy but making the world safe for capital, much as Adam Smith argued in his book that capital needed to be safe for a free market to continue to function. In some sense, the fight was for freedom, but freedom of business capital, not individual freedoms. When you see that, it becomes clear why many "allies" of the United States are among the worst human rights offenders in the world while we demonize other countries. Our "allies" are ones willing to do business with us (like Saudi Arabia selling us our oil addiction), while our "enemies" are ones that are economic rivals (or simply more socialist states uninterested in cooperating with privately-controlled American corporations). Notice tensions are cooling with rival countries like Russia as they become more capitalist and open to American businesses and capital, incidentally. Of course, we utilize any economic rivals as a source of anxiety to push for more military and defense spending, which itself is typically handled by privately-owned military industrial "contractors that profit from further spending. The spending that generates military profits must come from somewhere, and so taxes are raised, wages are lowered, to ensure the nation keeps spending while the capitalists continue to profit.
"Free trade agreements" are all about securing favorable conditions for corporations and capital. Since agreements like NAFTA have been signed, we've seen a shrinking middle class with lower salaries and benefits, and a growing poverty class with no safety net, as corporate taxes are cut to help fund offshoring of those corporations to generate even larger capital and profits. Not only that, but in the process, we've granted corporation more and more "human rights", allowing corporations to sue governments for profit loss (arguing for example that social programs prevent them from making as much profit as they could have) and further weaken our social safety nets. We've also empowered the president to make such binding agreements without consulting Congress, further centralizing economic power in the hands of a few individuals rather than the people. De-regulation and trade agreements have effectively left corporations with more rights than individuals. Again, leaders of both parties have generally championed free trade agreements and their effects, with only a few such as Bernie Sanders speaking out against them.
To enforce trade agreements and business property rights, we see our police forces drift toward "police states" that become more concerned with protecting private property than actually defending citizens against injustice. A well-known recent event was the DAPL protests, in which peaceful protesters were violently attacked by police forces who considered themselves "defending" the property on behalf of the pipeline that supposedly owned the land (nevermind that the protesters were largely Native Americans that had rightful ownership of that land under treaties with the United States - again, our police and military make the world safe for business and capital, not individual human rights).
While Republicans are often detestable for socially-backwards views, we must remember that Democrats usually support the same neoliberal policies Republicans do. Such policies lead to massive wealth inequalities that elevate a select few into "rich" status at the expense of pushing large amounts of Americans down into poverty, all while reducing our individual freedoms, weakening our democracy, and transforming our country into a police state more interested in protecting capital than human civil rights. Unfortunately Republicans winning elections is often a backlash to such policies hurting the average American, much like how Democrats win after average Americans continue to suffer under the same neoliberal Republican policies. Both sides get to bash each other over the head with the negative effects every 4-8 years and win in landslides because people are angry and yet feel trapped in the two party system. In effect, both parties get to "have their cake and eat it too" as they implement neoliberal policies that profit themselves and simply wait for the next cycle to sweep them into power for even more profits.
The way to combat this is not to support either major party, but to fight the entire neoliberal establishment as a whole. I believe the best way to do so is build a new political party and movement that focuses on people and planet over profits, that values human and individual rights, that believes corporations are not entitled to make money no matter what. A party that acknowledges that natural resources are precious, and their extraction and use deeply impacts the entire community if not region or whole world, and so we need more bottom-up democratic structures managing those resources rather than top-down corporate dictatorships. The Green Party is exactly that party, and I invite you to join in building the party rather than propping up either of our current major neoliberal parties. And if you want to learn more about neoliberalism and how today's world was built by both major parties, Chomsky's book is an excellent introduction to the subject.
Sunday, December 3, 2017
The STV proportional representation voting method
In the last post, I described the need for proportional representation to establish a more democratic and fair system for electing our representatives. I originally began thinking of the topic when I recently was browsing in the library and came across a short book entitled "Proportional Representation: The Key to Democracy" by George H. Hallett, Jr. The book was originally published in 1937, and is a short read at just a touch over 100 pages (on small size paper, so could be easily read in an afternoon).
What caught my interest was that there were several books in the library around that time period advocating for PR, and while casually flipping through the book, I saw references to the fact that cities like Cincinnati were using PR at the time. Is that still true today?, I thought. (Incidentally, Cincinnati used PR from 1925 until 1957; there have been attempts to bring it back since then that have lost by very close margins). FairVote actually provides an excellent brief history of proportional representation, which helps answer those questions. I'll provide some of those responses below, which actually echo most of Hallet's arguments for PR.
So I spent the last post talking about the high-levels of why we needed PR. Today, I thought I'd go through Hallet's small book and discuss exactly what STV PR is, and list the advantages and arguments for PR that it lists. I think all of them are good arguments just as applicable today as back then, and considering the book's age, I feel like it is worthwhile documenting older texts before they are lost to history.
First, the single transferrable vote (STV) method of proportional representation is a very straightforward name for the process. Voters are presented with the entire list of all candidates, and voters choose the candidate that they feel best represents them. As we will see, STV does away with the need for primaries, so voters can select from all available candidates and not just the single nominees of each party. However, unlikely plurality voting, voters can choose to rank the candidates in order from who is the first choice for their vote down to last choice. Voters are not required to rank all candidates; voters can pick only their top two favorites, or four, or any possibility. Voters therefore only vote for candidates they find acceptable, and are not required to pick any candidate they do not want.
When the votes are counted to determine the winners, we follow slightly different practices. A few alternatives exist, all roughly the same, so I'll explain the one that seems most common. The city sets a threshold for the number of votes needed to win a seat on the legislative body (city or county council, etc.). It might be say 1500 votes, or more, depending on the population of the city; the board of elections would set this number in advance. This means that ANY candidate that receives at least 1500 votes is on the council; the number of seats is therefore dynamic and depends on how many people turn out to vote. As the population for the city grows and more voters turn out, the council will automatically be expanded to ensure proper representation of all groups in the city. If population goes down and there are less candidates, the size of the council adjusts downward as well. (An alternative is to set a constant number of members on the council, and adjust the winning threshold based on the voter turnout, but I personally like the variable council size method better).
The tallying of votes is where the process is most significantly different. The votes are counted and sorted based on their rankings. First, everyone's first choice is counted and tallied. If there are any candidates that receive over the threshold (say, over 1500) votes, those candidates are declared immediate winners. Other candidates may not have received the full 1500, but are reasonably close. Other can be mathematically shown they will never win 1500 votes (because perhaps less than 1500 people chose that candidate in their rankings!). The candidates that cannot win are eliminated, and their votes are transferred to the second choice candidates. Simultaneously, candidates that received more than 1500 votes don't need more votes (they've already won! doesn't do any good to have more), so in order to try to balance out the minority votes from losing candidates, we also transfer the votes of the excess votes (over 1500) to the second choice candidates. In this way, both the majority and minority are represented and have their votes counted toward a candidate; no vote is wasted! We continue this process of transferring votes until there are no more candidates to transfer votes from. Then, ALL candidates over the threshold are winners. While slightly complicated in vote counting, the process is fairly intuitive and transparent (since the method of transferring votes can be calculated much like one balances a checkbook, anyone can confirm the arithmetic is correct) and ensures a council that represents the views of its citizens proportionally, ensuring everyone has a fair representation and a voice on the council.
This is only a brief overview of the method. We'll discuss how and why this works more as we review Hallet's arguments for PR below.
Specifically, Hallet points out the following advantages of STV PR:
What caught my interest was that there were several books in the library around that time period advocating for PR, and while casually flipping through the book, I saw references to the fact that cities like Cincinnati were using PR at the time. Is that still true today?, I thought. (Incidentally, Cincinnati used PR from 1925 until 1957; there have been attempts to bring it back since then that have lost by very close margins). FairVote actually provides an excellent brief history of proportional representation, which helps answer those questions. I'll provide some of those responses below, which actually echo most of Hallet's arguments for PR.
So I spent the last post talking about the high-levels of why we needed PR. Today, I thought I'd go through Hallet's small book and discuss exactly what STV PR is, and list the advantages and arguments for PR that it lists. I think all of them are good arguments just as applicable today as back then, and considering the book's age, I feel like it is worthwhile documenting older texts before they are lost to history.
First, the single transferrable vote (STV) method of proportional representation is a very straightforward name for the process. Voters are presented with the entire list of all candidates, and voters choose the candidate that they feel best represents them. As we will see, STV does away with the need for primaries, so voters can select from all available candidates and not just the single nominees of each party. However, unlikely plurality voting, voters can choose to rank the candidates in order from who is the first choice for their vote down to last choice. Voters are not required to rank all candidates; voters can pick only their top two favorites, or four, or any possibility. Voters therefore only vote for candidates they find acceptable, and are not required to pick any candidate they do not want.
When the votes are counted to determine the winners, we follow slightly different practices. A few alternatives exist, all roughly the same, so I'll explain the one that seems most common. The city sets a threshold for the number of votes needed to win a seat on the legislative body (city or county council, etc.). It might be say 1500 votes, or more, depending on the population of the city; the board of elections would set this number in advance. This means that ANY candidate that receives at least 1500 votes is on the council; the number of seats is therefore dynamic and depends on how many people turn out to vote. As the population for the city grows and more voters turn out, the council will automatically be expanded to ensure proper representation of all groups in the city. If population goes down and there are less candidates, the size of the council adjusts downward as well. (An alternative is to set a constant number of members on the council, and adjust the winning threshold based on the voter turnout, but I personally like the variable council size method better).
The tallying of votes is where the process is most significantly different. The votes are counted and sorted based on their rankings. First, everyone's first choice is counted and tallied. If there are any candidates that receive over the threshold (say, over 1500) votes, those candidates are declared immediate winners. Other candidates may not have received the full 1500, but are reasonably close. Other can be mathematically shown they will never win 1500 votes (because perhaps less than 1500 people chose that candidate in their rankings!). The candidates that cannot win are eliminated, and their votes are transferred to the second choice candidates. Simultaneously, candidates that received more than 1500 votes don't need more votes (they've already won! doesn't do any good to have more), so in order to try to balance out the minority votes from losing candidates, we also transfer the votes of the excess votes (over 1500) to the second choice candidates. In this way, both the majority and minority are represented and have their votes counted toward a candidate; no vote is wasted! We continue this process of transferring votes until there are no more candidates to transfer votes from. Then, ALL candidates over the threshold are winners. While slightly complicated in vote counting, the process is fairly intuitive and transparent (since the method of transferring votes can be calculated much like one balances a checkbook, anyone can confirm the arithmetic is correct) and ensures a council that represents the views of its citizens proportionally, ensuring everyone has a fair representation and a voice on the council.
This is only a brief overview of the method. We'll discuss how and why this works more as we review Hallet's arguments for PR below.
Specifically, Hallet points out the following advantages of STV PR:
- Effective voting, meaning that nearly everyone that votes will have at least someone from their list chosen to represent them. Even if it is not their top choice, nearly everyone will have their number two or three elected, and so most voters will feel comfortable with the results.
- Unanimous constituencies, meaning each representative is elected from a block of voters that agree on some issue and not simply voters that live in the same ward (as we do with our current single-member districts). Representatives can focus on issues that get them elected and not "straddling the line" in a district (in other words, the typical "I'm a centrist" that stands for nothing so as not to offend and get elected, as we hear today).
- Minority representation, meaning voters group themselves into minority "parties" based on important issues and can elect a representative even with a small group. They get some small representation rather than never having a voice in government under single-member districts and a two-party system. These minority groups can be "single issue" parties that feel shut out by the major parties, for example, by focusing things like fracking or single payer healthcare.
- Majority rule, meaning that while minority groups are represented, no minority group can force through their agenda without building a majority coalition with the other elected representatives that were elected on perhaps other issues. Most decisions made by the group will represent the will of the majority, whereas under single-member districting and two-party rule it is easy for a larger minority to take complete control despite up to half of voters completely disagreeing with the proposal. See Pennsylvania, where a majority of voters voted for Democratic candidates and yet Republicans control the state assembly with a 60% supermajority.
- New freedom in voting, meaning voters can worry less about "tactical voting" and vote for the candidate(s) and platform(s) they truly believe in. There is no concern about splitting the vote; one can rest safely knowing that if the first choice cannot win, the vote will be transferred to a second preferred choice rather than the last hated choice.
- A check to machine rule, meaning that the freedom to vote for any candidate typically means voters choose better candidates rather than settling on the establishment "political machine" candidates. It becomes harder for establishment candidates to win unless they truly represent the interests of the people, which leads to the next point.
- The transformation of machines, meaning that establishment political parties must bend their will to the will of the people and support popular policy or they won't be elected. There cannot be a lesser evil argument when your votes can be transferred. Establishment must adopt popular policy or will lose to another group that does.
- The gerrymander killed, since PR is applied to entire municipalities or to large permanent "super-districts", which completely kills the need for re-districting and hence partisan re-districting ("gerrymandering").
- A solution for reapportionment, making it easy to vary the number of representatives in the legislative body by simply requiring one representative for every set number of votes (for example, 75,000 votes). In this way, the number of representatives changes with the population automatically each election, and there is no need for reapportionment and re-districting after each census as we do now.
- Continuity, meaning that PR prevents sudden "landslides" that can push a minority into majority rule as under our current system. PR simply increases or decreases representation proportional to the votes, and popular leaders will remain elected, with only the unpopular ones losing their seats. Going from 49% of the vote to 51% means only an extra seat or two in PR, with each side retaining roughly equal control, while under plurality might mean the difference between total defeat or total victory.
- The development of leadership, allowing representatives to be independent leaders rather than "rubber stamp" the political party's goals. The party cannot threaten "losing endorsement" and ballot access, as happens under today's system. Anyone can be on the ballot regardless of party endorsement and still win, since voters can choose the best platform and not simply tactical voting.
- Development of interest, meaning that as the conversation changes from "lesser evil" to choosing the best platform, more voters will become interested in politics and elections and join the conversation. Many voters are today turned off by the angry discourse that results from a two-party system that pushes voting for a "lesser evil" that is still unacceptable. Why participate in a system where all of your options are ones you hate? With better options, we see more civic engagement, which is good for democracy.
- Reduction of fraud, as one would need to stuff a ballot with A LOT of votes under a PR system to get all of the candidates you want elected, and such a massive "landslide" would be immediately suspicious and investigated. There's less payoff for small fraud under PR, so less will even bother to attempt it.
- Elimination of primaries, since voters can simply pick their favorite candidates at once and have their votes transferred. There is no need to hold a separate, expensive election just for party nominees, especially when such primaries operate under party rules and can be manipulated. Parties are free to endorse as many candidates in the election as they wish, but they cannot prevent candidates from appearing on the general election ballot as they do with primaries.
- Cooperation and good feeling, since all of the above reasons contribute to campaigns focused on issues rather than simply attacking and trying to beat a particular candidate. Talking about issues wins votes as people find they agree with your platform, but there is little advantage to attacking an opponent when it might alienate voters and they'll simply pick some instead of you or the opponent.
- Does PR promote racial and religious blocs? While some voters may vote strictly along racial, religious, or other lines, most voters focus on issues important to them. Should some voters stick to small groups, even then the proportionality of PR means that they would not get a majority of elected officials and would not be able to pass legislation on their own if they are too radical. The book points out Cincinnati and other cities that used PR in the early 1900s held several successful elections and never saw evidence of this happening.
- Does PR deprive localities of representation? If we don't have districts, do the representatives really represent each neighborhood or locality? This is sort of the inverse question of promoting blocs as above, and has a similar answer. In order for each locality to NOT be represented, a different locality would have to form a voting bloc and win more seats. Since the seats are chosen proportionally, it is very difficult to imagine any scenario where voters in a locality would rank candidates from other localities that did not have their best interests in mind above candidates from their own area. In practice, this issue was not seen either, since voters focused on issues which tended to benefit their locality or the entire area as a whole.
- Does PR help extremists? Some worry that extremist groups may win seats in PR. For example, a Nazi may try to win a seat. But this fear is again unfounded because of proportionality. A small extremist minority is unlikely to have votes to win even one seat, and even if they did, would not have majority rule to pass any extremist agenda. Any such risk under PR is overblown, as it is much easier for an extremist party to take advantage of our current system's unfair districts and two-party primary process to take majority rule. Consider that the "Tea Party" of 2009 was a very small group of Republicans but was able to target certain districts and win a large amount of seats in Congress, and influence the entire Republican party, whereas such a win would not have been possible under PR since the Tea Party was clearly not endorsed by a majority of Americans (or even a majority of Republicans). Tea Party would have at best won a couple seats in PR, not a takeover of party goals as was what happened under our current system. You need majority backing in PR to win a majority, but that's not true under the current system.
- Does PR increase the bargaining power of minorities? Certainly minorities would have representation in PR and so a bargain or compromise would sometimes be needed to win a majority vote, depending on the proportions involved. But again the issue is overblown, as any "risk" of needing to bargain with a minority is much less than our current system which can give minority parties outright control to do completely as they wish.
- Does PR make legislation harder? Since PR focuses on issues that affect the community, in most circumstances the representatives would all be focused on the same or similar issues affecting the whole community, and can make compromises to ensure it happens. Our current system focuses on winning elections only, leading to two major parties that constantly flip flop, getting nothing done. PR actually would make the system work more efficiently for things we all agree on instead of focusing on the "horse race" of who is "winning".
- Does PR break down one-party government? Effectively, PR allows for a one-party (effectively: no parties), two-party, or multi-party government, so if you feel on one side of spectrum or other, PR is neutral. PR chooses the best candidates based on the issues, and so will reflect the will of the people. If there are many important issues, there will be many parties. History has shown some cities to be satisfied with two parties, while others like New York saw a vibrant multiparty system form due to the large amount of issues for a city of such large size. It is up to the voters that live in the area to determine how best to structure politics, and PR works with any choice.
- Is PR hard to understand? For voters, it is easy to understand that you simply number the candidates in order from favorite to least favorite. The counting process is a little more complex, but most voters already don't know the process of handling votes under today's system, so not much would change in terms of what voters need to know. PR does open up the ability to monitor and challenge elections since the votes are centrally counted and the arithmetic easily verified, which would actually make elections more transparent than they are today.
- Does the PR count take too much time? People are used to hearing the preliminary results immediately on election night. PR would take a bit longer to go through and transfer votes to second choice, etc., but election workers can do this over the course of only a couple days. We can allow a day or two to ensure a correct count when we're choosing leaders for the next 2-4 years. And if you want a preliminary estimate, exit polls might help.
- Does PR lend itself to manipulation? Since PR requires several vote counts, during which we transfer votes from losing to winning candidates, the ballots will be counted several times by many poll workers with many poll watchers monitoring the entirely process. Thus, fraud and manipulation are actually harder to pull off and the system is much more transparent. More than worrying about PR or voting method, if we are concerned about manipulation, we should focus on electronic voting machines currently in use in Pennsylvania. Such machines have no audit trail and may be easily manipulated. We should use paper ballots with PR for maximum transparency.
- Does PR cost too much? While PR would likely require hiring extra workers to count votes in a timely manner, the cost is much less than the costs of a primary and a potential run-off vote. PR replaces the need for these extra elections since votes are transferred automatically during the count. The net cost historically has been much lower in cities that moved to PR.
- Does PR make the ballot too long? In most cases the ballot won't be too long because there is no need to artificial raise the number of candidates to "split the vote" as is sometimes done in today's primaries and general elections. Even if there are many candidates, voters need not rank EVERY candidate, but only their favorites or the ones they know well. Even if the ballot has 30 candidates, voters can rank their top 5. In practice in cities that moved to PR, this was not an issue.
- Does PR make it harder to know the candidates? While there are potentially more candidates, most voters will find it easier to learn about candidates and their choices. Under today's system, most voters are not sure which district they are in, and media (newspapers, etc.) tend to devote their resources to top races like mayor or governor and less resources to every small district. The effect being that many voters don't have any idea about who the candidates are in their local races. If there are no districts, coverage must be more fair for all candidates rather than only the larger races and districts, if for no other reason than any candidate a voter hears about is someone that the voter can choose (since districts no longer restrict choice).
- Does PR make campaigning harder? While it is true the campaign area can be larger since there are no more districts, the flip-side is that candidates are no longer competing for a majority of votes, just the amount of votes necessary to win a seat. Therefore candidates can customize their campaign to reach the constituency they want: focus on a certain neighborhood or group to win the voters needed or a seat. Campaigning in every neighborhood in the whole city is therefore not strictly required to win. Since PR removes the need for primaries, this also frees up more time and money for the general election.
- Does PR decrease interest in elections? Since PR elections tend to focus on issues, more citizens tend to become interested. Historically, cities that used PR saw increased voter turnout.
- Does PR mean minority rule? This is an objection already seen and answered, basically. PR allows for some minority representation, but ultimately the majority of elected representatives set the agenda. Majority rule does not require that each representative strictly represent the majority, it requires a majority of representatives that decide a question to represent a majority of voters, via coalition and agreement.
- Does PR infringe the rights of the voter? The PR system presented allows for a single transferable vote (STV), such that you get a single vote that is transferred to your next choice should your top choice not be able to win a seat. This system is the most fair because if you give everyone multiple votes (say, 7 votes for 7 seats), the tendency will be that the largest group will elect its 7 candidates (Democrats will vote for the 7 Democrats on the ballot, for example) and the resulting election will not proportionally represent all voters. Each person choose a single representative that best represents them, regardless of party affiliation or district.
- Does PR leave elections to chance? This is an objection based on the method of counting votes described in Hallet's book. Specifically, the objection is to the idea that votes for a winning candidate over the threshold are also transferred to second choice candidates; essentially, how do you choose which votes are transferred and which stay with the first choice? I'll leave the full details to the book, but effectively PR's method of counting is so fair and accurate that randomly choosing ballots to transfer and which to not still accurately represents the whole (because of statistics over a large group of people). And if one is not convinced by mathematics, there are ways to more deterministically decide the question (although they are a bit more complex). The winners are not left to chance in either method.
- Is PR "un-American"? PR carries out the American principles of majority rule and equality of voting power better than any other system.
- Is PR unimportant? Some object to a campaign for PR, because there are "more important things" to focus on than PR and we just need to "elect the right people" to get it done. However, focusing on "electing the right people" to accomplish the will of the people is much more difficult under today's system. PR makes it easy to stick to the issues and elect the right people, so PR needs to be a top priority reform before we can focus on other issues.
- Has PR failed where it has been tried? Many cities have moved to use PR successfully, producing the most balanced and issues-focused budgets in recent history. Where the establishment has attempted to repeal PR, voters historically soundly rejected it. (There were cases of PR being removed due to changes in state governance, and racism as we'll see, but most voters that tried PR were extremely satisfied with the results). In a nutshell, nearly everyone that tries it prefers it and sees immediate results.
Hallet's book was published in 1937 as PR was becoming very popular; unfortunately, many cities and counties that adopted PR would see it phased out later in the 1950's and '60s. So I would like to add one more "modern" bullet point to the previous list of objections:
In light of the history of the PR movement and the points above, one final question comes to mind. If we want to implement PR today, how do we actually get it implemented around our current corrupt system that will not support PR for fear of losing power? If the Green Party would like to address concerns of "splitting the vote" and gerrymandering, what can it do aside from running more candidates in an unfair election system?
Hallet's book and FairVote's article actually provide historical evidence of one path to victory: utilize the voter referendum. What does that mean, though? I will post a follow-up blog post where I will discuss referenda at length, and I will review my research on whether this is feasible soon.
- If PR has obvious advantages, why did cities that used it in the past almost completely abandoned the method in the 1950s and '60s? As FairVote's brief history of PR discusses, PR worked almost too well. PR was incredibly successful at breaking down party machines and including minority representation in government, and Hallet's points above have proven to be true across the country in all municipalities that adopted PR. However, during the civil rights movement era and the "red scare", leaders from the two major parties -- angry at being unable to control elections and therefore government like they used to -- used racist appeals to fear of "Negro mayors" or fear of Communists winning elections under PR in order to convince the population to vote to repeal PR and move back to the older plurality systems. Unfortunately, the scare tactics were successful in most places, with white voters voting 2:1 to repeal PR due to those fears. So after decades of successful use of PR, many cities votes to scrap it, not for any problem with PR itself (as said above, previous repeal attempts were unsuccessful due to huge satisfaction with the system) but fear-mongering from the major parties. To me, this is actually all the more reason and evidence that PR is successful and a worthwhile goal, and that we need to fight to educate voters and establish PR in the US once again!
In light of the history of the PR movement and the points above, one final question comes to mind. If we want to implement PR today, how do we actually get it implemented around our current corrupt system that will not support PR for fear of losing power? If the Green Party would like to address concerns of "splitting the vote" and gerrymandering, what can it do aside from running more candidates in an unfair election system?
Hallet's book and FairVote's article actually provide historical evidence of one path to victory: utilize the voter referendum. What does that mean, though? I will post a follow-up blog post where I will discuss referenda at length, and I will review my research on whether this is feasible soon.
Tuesday, November 28, 2017
Proportional Representation as the key to free and fair democratic elections
"But how will you win?" is a common question I've been hearing lately about the prospect of running as a third-party candidate, or even simply voting for third-party candidates. "Our members are a skeptical group that expects results", one representative of an organization told me (paraphrased) when I inquired about Green party support from the group, "and so you will need to convince our membership that you can win elections before we can endorse your candidates."
It is a frustrating response to hear when clearly, for decades now, the strategy of "changing" the two major parties to reflect the will of the people has produced only very small concessions and wins at best. While the inclusion of gay rights, for example, has been a huge win (and notice that win was largely in the courts and through citizen action, not from action of politicians in either party -- in fact, Obama and Clinton both famously were against gay marriage during the 2008 primaries), we have economically slid backward as both Democratic and Republican administrations continue their assault on working class Americans and the classic institutions that protected our human rights. Budgets are slashed, social programs are cut, regulations that protected us dismantled, all while the American people pick up the tab for the worldwide economic crash caused by those very same loosening of regulations. We now see decades of neoliberal policy culminating in the GOP's new tax plan that is obviously weighted toward the most wealthy at the expense of the poor, and it is very near passage. All of this is happening with a backdrop of constant war and involvement in the Middle East, with an ever-growing budget funding the military-industrial complex.
It is clear to me that not only is the status quo of the two parties no longer tenable, but the status quo of the "resistance" -- the idea that we can win over the establishment with a couple of hour-long marches and running progressives in the primaries under establishment rules -- is also no longer tenable. Progressives have for years been calling for change within the Democratic Party, and have failed as the party dragged those voices further and further right. For evidence, only look at past party leaders like Howard Dean, who once championed a progressive agenda including single payer, which now make arguments for further pro-corporate policy as they take massive donations from those very industries.
We have to change our tactics and strategy to make long-term progress and not just short-lived victories that are quickly crushed. And yet, I can't entirely blame the objections over third-party politics. In a sense, they are exactly right -- our electoral system has evolved to reinforce exactly this dilemma, to make it hard to break out of the establishment bubble. While it certainly can happen when people join together and demand it -- look at the DSA-backed independents and third-party members that won elections this year, as well as the Greens that won 44 new seats and counting, on top of past wins -- it is also foolish to say that there is not a significant road block. This road block is a multi-part road block, consisting of a legal system that discriminates against third parties, a media that ignores or even demonizes third parties, and the plain ol' "psychological inertia" of voters that are afraid of "wasting the vote" due to the intense long-term propaganda. The question isn't whether there is a road block (there is), but rather what to do about it.
Most of the objections over "winning" and "results" narrow down to objections over how easy (or hard) it is to convince people to vote third-party in a two-party duopoly. Our two-party duopoly is maintained by several factors, as I outlined in the previous paragraph, but one of the largest is the way we actually we vote. I heard over and over from voters, as I petitioned for signatures for Green candidates last summer, that if Greens ran more candidates they would be registered Green; the only reason they remained registered Democratic was to be able to vote in Pennsylvania's closed primaries. Important Pittsburgh positions like mayor are effectively determined in the primaries because the city is effectively a one-party Democratic town; if there is no Republican or Green or Libertarian challenger (and typically there isn't, in recent history) in the general, the Democratic primary winner is elected. Because of gerrymandering and our voting system, we have a city that is on paper "Democratic" by necessity, but many of its citizens are ready for an alternative. Democratic rule has not been effective at confronting many of Pittsburgh's problems. We still don't have a $15 living minimum wage, areas of the city are gentrifying out its citizens (while poorer districts are ignored by officials), parts of the city have lead pipes that the administration has been slow to combat (while even hiring consultants to make the argument of privatizing the public water supply, which is a very Republican thing to suggest), and many other problems.
While it's certainly possible for Greens to win elections if a majority stopped being afraid of voting third party (there's no law that stops Greens from winning in the general election, it's just the willpower of voters), there is a lot of mental resistance from voters for doing so, for fear of "splitting the vote". Some voters' concerns of "splitting the vote" are not entirely wrong, but I believe the concept focuses on the wrong aspect of the problem.
So what is "splitting the vote"? The United States and Pennsylvania in particular use plurality voting, which means whoever wins the most (a plurality) of votes wins the election. On the surface this seems perfectly fair, most votes is the winner, but when more than two candidates are on the ballot, it can lead to tactical voting. Voters become afraid to support anyone but one of the two perceived front-runners, for concern that the vote split across many candidates lowers the amount needed to win. For example, a four-way election in which three candidates get 24% of the vote and the fourth gets 28% of the vote declares the fourth candidate as the winner. 28% was the plurality, but something is clearly wrong with a system that allows someone with such a small vote total to win the election and pretend to represent the people. You aren't very representative if the overwhelming majority (72%!) voted against you! 2016 actually showed this, where both Trump and Clinton received less than a majority (50%) of the vote. Most Americans actually opposed both candidates by a slight majority, and Trump won despite having less votes than Clinton because our Electoral College hurts our voting methods for president even more. In fact, the same happened in the GOP primaries, where Trump won early states with only 20% or so of the vote; 18 candidates meant a very small threshold was required to win. When every presidential election in recent history is nearly an even split, it's not hard to see how plurality voting leads to our current angry partisan situation. And really, can you blame voters? Roughly half of the country is angry they lost because effectively they had no impact on the results of the elections. Either you "win" with "your" party, or you lose with the exact opposite party you least wanted to see win, there's no middle ground. And the corporate media is more than happy to take advantage and over-hype these contests and frame the debate toward supporting "realistic" corporate-backed candidates, leading to further corruption in the system.
So one strategy for Greens may be to run Greens in gerrymandered districts where it is unlikely that the other major party will offer an alternative -- in this way, there is no "vote splitting". I think this can work, but requires us to recruit candidates in those districts to run, which can sometimes be difficult when so many are afraid to leave the two major parties. While there is a lot of progressive interest in running for office, the recent DSA victories seem to have many progressives confident that running in the Democratic primaries is sufficient; while I'm not confident they will be able to repeat the successes at the state and federal level, even if they do, we leave open the door for a corporate re-take-over of the party until we change the system upon which our politics is based. We as Greens clearly need better outreach to candidates to convince them of our approach and the necessity for the third party politics.
Alongside the electoral approach, which can educate the voters about issues such as our voting system even if our candidates do not win, we need to also build a coalition for activism. We must acknowledge that our voting system needs to change, not just for Greens and third parties, but even just to improve the major parties' primary process. Voters from across the political spectrum must work to give up on archaic voting methods and join the modern world if we wish to be a strong democracy. We need a better system that promotes real debate on issues, rather than gerrymandering and voting for the "lesser of two evils" simply to avoid "splitting the vote".
To build a coalition, we need plan. Our current voting system is bad, most realize this. But what do we replace it with?
An alternative to plurality voting is called ranked choice voting, where voters select not just one candidate (which leads to the tactical "lesser of two evils" voting, as above) but rank ALL of the choices in order from most preferred to least. If the most preferred candidate does not have enough votes to win in the first round of vote counting, those votes are transferred to their second choice candidate, and the votes are re-tallied. This method is much more fair because now there is no concern about "splitting the vote", you can vote your conscience knowing that if your favorite candidate cannot mathematically win, your vote is transferred to the next best option, and so on. This method obviously results in the candidate with the broadest consensus being the winner; even if the winner is not everyone's top choice, it elects candidates with broad appeal rather than those with narrow minority support (which we saw before in the case of Trump in the 2016 primaries, for example), so voters are generally much more agreeable to the results of this voting method.
When electing a legislature (Congress or a state assembly of representatives), we encounter the same problem. Voters are split into districts and told to vote for a single candidate. Again, many voters are reluctant to vote for a third or fourth choice for fear that the other major party candidate will win. Districts themselves are often "gerrymandered", drawn in such a way as to group together all of the votes for one major party or the other in a single district, with the effect that the aggregate winners across all districts do not actually reflect the interests of individual voters across the districts. We see this in Pennsylvania where despite a clear majority of voters voting for Democratic candidates statewide, Republicans control a majority of state representative seats. Gerrymandering "dilutes" Democratic votes by pushing them into a small number of districts where they have less impact overall (e.g., they can't elect very many representatives since there aren't many districts). To be fair, Democrats have done the same to Republicans in other states and other points in time; the two major parties constantly swing back and forth in power, abusing the re-districting process and plurality vote to gain majority control of government.
For legislative bodies, the fix is known as proportional representation (PR), which is basically ranked choice when you need to pick more than one person. Rather than using districts, we let voters choose their preferred candidate(s) from a list of ALL candidates. For example, rather than Pittsburgh splitting itself into small wards, we let everyone in Pittsburgh vote from a list of candidates that may come from anywhere in the city. Voters rank their preferences, so we again lose any worry of "splitting the vote". As votes are tallied, we set a threshold that anyone reaching an agreed minimum number of votes wins a seat. This means the election is about getting the correct number of votes needed to be elected, rather than a percentage of the overall, which tends to have the effect that candidates focus more on winning votes rather than attacking opponents (too much attacking and you will likely scare off some of your own voters). As we count votes and determine winners, we transfer votes from losing candidates (that have no possibility of getting the required number of votes) onto other candidates, and keep recounting until we get the appropriate number of winners. In fact, we can even transfer votes from winning candidates onto second choice candidates, and therein lies the beauty of PR. As we transfer votes, we settle on the most popular candidates that were ranked the highest by the largest number of people, and thus settle on winners that reflect the majority of the voters, all while providing a small number of seats to minority groups (smaller groups still have a good chance at winning even just one seat, since they need only gather up the minimum number of votes to win, they don't need to necessary "beat" any other candidate). In this way, the final set of winners that make up the legislative body are diverse, the majority of them elected by the majority, while ensuring smaller groups have at least some say in the debate by being able to elect at least one person. This method is known as the single transferable vote (STV) since voters simply rank their preferences, and their votes are automatically transferred to the next highest candidate that needs the vote to win. Some countries use an alternative version of PR known as "party list" where voters vote for a party rather than an individual, but this is less desirable as it puts some control of elections and candidates in party hands rather than the people's hands. The STV PR method ensures a truly representative body that was elected by focusing on issues and winning votes rather than scaring voters with attack ads and "lesser evil" arguments. It also allows lesser known candidates a fair shot at getting the required minimum of votes, even against more well-known establishment candidates, since votes are automatically transferred as needed.
There's a lot of detail in here about exactly how to count the votes in an STV PR system, but hopefully this argument has at least shown why we should even be considering adopting such a system.
Greens already support PR in the Green platform. Locally, I think we need to run as many candidates as we can -- the more the better! Every campaign is an opportunity for voter outreach and education on the issues, and when we win, we can use what clout we win to push even more for PR from within government. However, that said, I think a successful campaign for PR will also take some activism from outside electoral politics.
Since the post is already fairly long, I'll pause here and plan a follow up post about the specifics of exactly how PR works, as well as some responses to common objections to PR, based on an interesting book I recently picked up. I'll also have some thoughts on how we can work toward PR in the Pittsburgh area and beyond using a combination of electoral politics and activism. Stay tuned!
It is a frustrating response to hear when clearly, for decades now, the strategy of "changing" the two major parties to reflect the will of the people has produced only very small concessions and wins at best. While the inclusion of gay rights, for example, has been a huge win (and notice that win was largely in the courts and through citizen action, not from action of politicians in either party -- in fact, Obama and Clinton both famously were against gay marriage during the 2008 primaries), we have economically slid backward as both Democratic and Republican administrations continue their assault on working class Americans and the classic institutions that protected our human rights. Budgets are slashed, social programs are cut, regulations that protected us dismantled, all while the American people pick up the tab for the worldwide economic crash caused by those very same loosening of regulations. We now see decades of neoliberal policy culminating in the GOP's new tax plan that is obviously weighted toward the most wealthy at the expense of the poor, and it is very near passage. All of this is happening with a backdrop of constant war and involvement in the Middle East, with an ever-growing budget funding the military-industrial complex.
It is clear to me that not only is the status quo of the two parties no longer tenable, but the status quo of the "resistance" -- the idea that we can win over the establishment with a couple of hour-long marches and running progressives in the primaries under establishment rules -- is also no longer tenable. Progressives have for years been calling for change within the Democratic Party, and have failed as the party dragged those voices further and further right. For evidence, only look at past party leaders like Howard Dean, who once championed a progressive agenda including single payer, which now make arguments for further pro-corporate policy as they take massive donations from those very industries.
We have to change our tactics and strategy to make long-term progress and not just short-lived victories that are quickly crushed. And yet, I can't entirely blame the objections over third-party politics. In a sense, they are exactly right -- our electoral system has evolved to reinforce exactly this dilemma, to make it hard to break out of the establishment bubble. While it certainly can happen when people join together and demand it -- look at the DSA-backed independents and third-party members that won elections this year, as well as the Greens that won 44 new seats and counting, on top of past wins -- it is also foolish to say that there is not a significant road block. This road block is a multi-part road block, consisting of a legal system that discriminates against third parties, a media that ignores or even demonizes third parties, and the plain ol' "psychological inertia" of voters that are afraid of "wasting the vote" due to the intense long-term propaganda. The question isn't whether there is a road block (there is), but rather what to do about it.
Most of the objections over "winning" and "results" narrow down to objections over how easy (or hard) it is to convince people to vote third-party in a two-party duopoly. Our two-party duopoly is maintained by several factors, as I outlined in the previous paragraph, but one of the largest is the way we actually we vote. I heard over and over from voters, as I petitioned for signatures for Green candidates last summer, that if Greens ran more candidates they would be registered Green; the only reason they remained registered Democratic was to be able to vote in Pennsylvania's closed primaries. Important Pittsburgh positions like mayor are effectively determined in the primaries because the city is effectively a one-party Democratic town; if there is no Republican or Green or Libertarian challenger (and typically there isn't, in recent history) in the general, the Democratic primary winner is elected. Because of gerrymandering and our voting system, we have a city that is on paper "Democratic" by necessity, but many of its citizens are ready for an alternative. Democratic rule has not been effective at confronting many of Pittsburgh's problems. We still don't have a $15 living minimum wage, areas of the city are gentrifying out its citizens (while poorer districts are ignored by officials), parts of the city have lead pipes that the administration has been slow to combat (while even hiring consultants to make the argument of privatizing the public water supply, which is a very Republican thing to suggest), and many other problems.
While it's certainly possible for Greens to win elections if a majority stopped being afraid of voting third party (there's no law that stops Greens from winning in the general election, it's just the willpower of voters), there is a lot of mental resistance from voters for doing so, for fear of "splitting the vote". Some voters' concerns of "splitting the vote" are not entirely wrong, but I believe the concept focuses on the wrong aspect of the problem.
So what is "splitting the vote"? The United States and Pennsylvania in particular use plurality voting, which means whoever wins the most (a plurality) of votes wins the election. On the surface this seems perfectly fair, most votes is the winner, but when more than two candidates are on the ballot, it can lead to tactical voting. Voters become afraid to support anyone but one of the two perceived front-runners, for concern that the vote split across many candidates lowers the amount needed to win. For example, a four-way election in which three candidates get 24% of the vote and the fourth gets 28% of the vote declares the fourth candidate as the winner. 28% was the plurality, but something is clearly wrong with a system that allows someone with such a small vote total to win the election and pretend to represent the people. You aren't very representative if the overwhelming majority (72%!) voted against you! 2016 actually showed this, where both Trump and Clinton received less than a majority (50%) of the vote. Most Americans actually opposed both candidates by a slight majority, and Trump won despite having less votes than Clinton because our Electoral College hurts our voting methods for president even more. In fact, the same happened in the GOP primaries, where Trump won early states with only 20% or so of the vote; 18 candidates meant a very small threshold was required to win. When every presidential election in recent history is nearly an even split, it's not hard to see how plurality voting leads to our current angry partisan situation. And really, can you blame voters? Roughly half of the country is angry they lost because effectively they had no impact on the results of the elections. Either you "win" with "your" party, or you lose with the exact opposite party you least wanted to see win, there's no middle ground. And the corporate media is more than happy to take advantage and over-hype these contests and frame the debate toward supporting "realistic" corporate-backed candidates, leading to further corruption in the system.
So one strategy for Greens may be to run Greens in gerrymandered districts where it is unlikely that the other major party will offer an alternative -- in this way, there is no "vote splitting". I think this can work, but requires us to recruit candidates in those districts to run, which can sometimes be difficult when so many are afraid to leave the two major parties. While there is a lot of progressive interest in running for office, the recent DSA victories seem to have many progressives confident that running in the Democratic primaries is sufficient; while I'm not confident they will be able to repeat the successes at the state and federal level, even if they do, we leave open the door for a corporate re-take-over of the party until we change the system upon which our politics is based. We as Greens clearly need better outreach to candidates to convince them of our approach and the necessity for the third party politics.
Alongside the electoral approach, which can educate the voters about issues such as our voting system even if our candidates do not win, we need to also build a coalition for activism. We must acknowledge that our voting system needs to change, not just for Greens and third parties, but even just to improve the major parties' primary process. Voters from across the political spectrum must work to give up on archaic voting methods and join the modern world if we wish to be a strong democracy. We need a better system that promotes real debate on issues, rather than gerrymandering and voting for the "lesser of two evils" simply to avoid "splitting the vote".
To build a coalition, we need plan. Our current voting system is bad, most realize this. But what do we replace it with?
An alternative to plurality voting is called ranked choice voting, where voters select not just one candidate (which leads to the tactical "lesser of two evils" voting, as above) but rank ALL of the choices in order from most preferred to least. If the most preferred candidate does not have enough votes to win in the first round of vote counting, those votes are transferred to their second choice candidate, and the votes are re-tallied. This method is much more fair because now there is no concern about "splitting the vote", you can vote your conscience knowing that if your favorite candidate cannot mathematically win, your vote is transferred to the next best option, and so on. This method obviously results in the candidate with the broadest consensus being the winner; even if the winner is not everyone's top choice, it elects candidates with broad appeal rather than those with narrow minority support (which we saw before in the case of Trump in the 2016 primaries, for example), so voters are generally much more agreeable to the results of this voting method.
When electing a legislature (Congress or a state assembly of representatives), we encounter the same problem. Voters are split into districts and told to vote for a single candidate. Again, many voters are reluctant to vote for a third or fourth choice for fear that the other major party candidate will win. Districts themselves are often "gerrymandered", drawn in such a way as to group together all of the votes for one major party or the other in a single district, with the effect that the aggregate winners across all districts do not actually reflect the interests of individual voters across the districts. We see this in Pennsylvania where despite a clear majority of voters voting for Democratic candidates statewide, Republicans control a majority of state representative seats. Gerrymandering "dilutes" Democratic votes by pushing them into a small number of districts where they have less impact overall (e.g., they can't elect very many representatives since there aren't many districts). To be fair, Democrats have done the same to Republicans in other states and other points in time; the two major parties constantly swing back and forth in power, abusing the re-districting process and plurality vote to gain majority control of government.
For legislative bodies, the fix is known as proportional representation (PR), which is basically ranked choice when you need to pick more than one person. Rather than using districts, we let voters choose their preferred candidate(s) from a list of ALL candidates. For example, rather than Pittsburgh splitting itself into small wards, we let everyone in Pittsburgh vote from a list of candidates that may come from anywhere in the city. Voters rank their preferences, so we again lose any worry of "splitting the vote". As votes are tallied, we set a threshold that anyone reaching an agreed minimum number of votes wins a seat. This means the election is about getting the correct number of votes needed to be elected, rather than a percentage of the overall, which tends to have the effect that candidates focus more on winning votes rather than attacking opponents (too much attacking and you will likely scare off some of your own voters). As we count votes and determine winners, we transfer votes from losing candidates (that have no possibility of getting the required number of votes) onto other candidates, and keep recounting until we get the appropriate number of winners. In fact, we can even transfer votes from winning candidates onto second choice candidates, and therein lies the beauty of PR. As we transfer votes, we settle on the most popular candidates that were ranked the highest by the largest number of people, and thus settle on winners that reflect the majority of the voters, all while providing a small number of seats to minority groups (smaller groups still have a good chance at winning even just one seat, since they need only gather up the minimum number of votes to win, they don't need to necessary "beat" any other candidate). In this way, the final set of winners that make up the legislative body are diverse, the majority of them elected by the majority, while ensuring smaller groups have at least some say in the debate by being able to elect at least one person. This method is known as the single transferable vote (STV) since voters simply rank their preferences, and their votes are automatically transferred to the next highest candidate that needs the vote to win. Some countries use an alternative version of PR known as "party list" where voters vote for a party rather than an individual, but this is less desirable as it puts some control of elections and candidates in party hands rather than the people's hands. The STV PR method ensures a truly representative body that was elected by focusing on issues and winning votes rather than scaring voters with attack ads and "lesser evil" arguments. It also allows lesser known candidates a fair shot at getting the required minimum of votes, even against more well-known establishment candidates, since votes are automatically transferred as needed.
There's a lot of detail in here about exactly how to count the votes in an STV PR system, but hopefully this argument has at least shown why we should even be considering adopting such a system.
Greens already support PR in the Green platform. Locally, I think we need to run as many candidates as we can -- the more the better! Every campaign is an opportunity for voter outreach and education on the issues, and when we win, we can use what clout we win to push even more for PR from within government. However, that said, I think a successful campaign for PR will also take some activism from outside electoral politics.
Since the post is already fairly long, I'll pause here and plan a follow up post about the specifics of exactly how PR works, as well as some responses to common objections to PR, based on an interesting book I recently picked up. I'll also have some thoughts on how we can work toward PR in the Pittsburgh area and beyond using a combination of electoral politics and activism. Stay tuned!
Monday, October 23, 2017
Insanity is Working With Democratic Party
Insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results, as they say. It seems like since the late 1960s, American socialists gave up on their own relatively successful party (which was winning local/state elections and influencing the national parties) to try to work within a two-party system, and that strategy has been a massive failure. Every election, socialists try to influence the party platform and candidates, and are basically disregarded as the party picks its own candidates and ignores its own platform. For 50 years now!
This is probably one of the biggest takeaways from my most recent read, "The 'S' Word - A Short History of an American Tradition ... Socialism" by John Nichols. It's a good book that I recommend to anyone that wants a short overview of important moments in American history that were shaped by socialist ideas (sometimes those ideas were a bit ahead of their time; perhaps the better way to say is those ideas shaped American socialism?). The book covers how Thomas Paine, Abraham Lincoln, and Martin Luther King, Jr., among others, were all influenced by socialist ideas and principles. It also is a decent short history of the Socialist Party, including the campaigns of Eugene Debs.
But the most interesting chapter to me was the last one, that talked about the socialist movement since the 1960s until today. While never a major party nationally, the Socialist Party was at its apex a very influential party that won local and state elections. In some cities, socialists were the major party, or at least the major opposition party. Socialists were often invited into Republican and Democratic administrations, as appointees or advisors. Many of the policies and programs that we know and love today - medicare, social security, five-day work week, even public water and sewer -- started as party platform demands of socialists that major party candidates adopted in order to win elections.
Unfortunately, the major parties used World War 1 (and later WW2) to stop the socialist movement. Most socialists opposed the US entering the war and spoke out strongly against it. The major parties passed laws declaring any opposition to the war as "unloyal" to the country, making it illegal with a stiff penalty of years in jail. Therefore many socialist party leaders, including presidential candidate Debs, were thrown in jail for a few years before later on having their sentences commuted. The aggressive attacks against 1st amendment speech had a chilling effect, and the party shrank. The socialist party didn't disappear because it was unpopular, it began to disappear because it was undermined by collusion between the major parties against our constitutional principles of freedom of speech. That undermining led to disagreement between factions within the socialist movement on how to best combat attacks from the major parties.
So the question is, what happened in the 1960s? There was a growing movement for the Republican party to move to the right that echoed many of the civil-war-era arguments for "states' rights". Largely the movement grew as an opposition to the expansion of civil rights, with a purposeful campaign known as the "Southern Strategy". The Republican party as we know it today -- not the party of Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt -- was forming.
To combat that, some socialist leaders, in particular Michael Harrington (who wrote a popular book "The Other America" on poverty, which apparently influenced JFK and Johnson), decided that the best thing to do was to play electoral politics as part of the Democratic Party rather than continuing to fight on in a Socialist Party. Harrington worked with several other activists to establish what would eventually become the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), which focused on putting pressure on the Democratic Party to implement policy rather than the traditional voter education goals of Socialist Party campaigns. Harrington and his activists went to the Democratic conventions to demand more socialist policy as part of the Democratic platform. They were successful getting many ideas written into the platform (at that time, the "most liberal platform in party history"), and were at first embolded by some early steps taken by Carter, but Democratic presidents have utterly failed to ever implement those socialist ideas in the Democratic platform ever since. In fact, the socialist-backed candidates were never picked, and the party instead picked pro-corporate party insiders, with candidates since Dukakis growing more and more weary of calling themselves "liberal" (we see that in today's Democratic candidates that often proudly call themselves "centrists"). With many activists moving to DSA and assisting the Democrats, the Socialist Party essentially died out nationwide (with a few holdovers here and there).
That story really stood out to me as a parallel to our recent elections. To stop Trump, Bernie and many others made the argument to hold the nose and support Democrats and vote for Clinton. Progressives were kicked out of the convention as Clinton nominated Tim Kaine, a fairly conservative Democrat, as her VP pick rather than a more progressive person like Elizabeth Warren or a socialist like Bernie. Several Bernie backers were placed on the party's platform committee earlier in the year, but Clinton-backed members defeated most proposals from the Berniecrats while the items that made it into the platform were essentially ignored by Clinton and her surrogates. Much like how in 2008 many rallied around Obama for hope and change, only to be disappointed when Obama ignored practically all of his progressive policy promises in order to implement a right-wing healthcare plan and continue much of Bush's economic and war policies.
This reaffirms my belief that attempting to work in the current money-dominated two-party system is a failed strategy for progressives and socialists. I knew that Obama and Clinton had no interest in implementing progressives policy, but I was surprised to learn it dates back much further. Progressive and socialist activists within the party have been trying to work with the Democrats for 50 years, only to watch Democrats drift further and further to the right each election. It feels insane to me to think that continuing this strategy will somehow magically work finally in 2018 or 2020, when it hasn't happened yet in 50 years.
It also confirms that third-parties can and do win; the strategy of a strong Socialist Party resisting both Republicans and Democrats has worked in the past to bring about important change. The strategy works because the major parties have to work to win the election. They have to offer better plans than you if they want to win, they cannot rest on status quo that isn't working. In a two-party system, it is too easy to be lazy and say "Well at least I'm not as bad as the other side!" and let the status quo stand, as we have seen for years now. Having third, fourth, fifth parties requires everyone to work harder, and so all Americans win with the best ideas being elected and implemented.
I view the Green Party as the spiritual successor to the Socialist Party. In fact, many Greens refer to the party as "eco-socialist", to emphasize that the Green platform is a combination of de-centralized democratic socialist economic policy with a need to practice ecological wisdom in our industries and economy (publicly-owned production that still spews out pollution is not a longer-term viable option either!). Socialists I think would find a lot in the Green platform that they would love, and probably don't even realize it! Not long ago, I had spoken with a few socialists at a rally in the early days of the Trump presidency, and asked if they'd sign to get a Green candidate on the ballot. They at first said no thanks. When I asked why, it became clear that they thought Greens weren't socialist enough for their support. As I explained the Green platform, they started to perk up, with one person saying "Oh, I didn't know that's what Greens stood for".
I think our challenge is to teach people about the history of socialism in our country - the labor movements, civil rights movement, etc. - and work to correct those misunderstandings of both socialism as a whole and the Green platform specifically. I know my goal is to help grow the Green Party into a strong champion of progressive socialist ideals in the Pittsburgh area. I think we can finish the work that Debs and others started more than 100 years ago, and work for a more just society and economy for all. I invite all others in the area to join the Green Party and help us create that vision.
This is probably one of the biggest takeaways from my most recent read, "The 'S' Word - A Short History of an American Tradition ... Socialism" by John Nichols. It's a good book that I recommend to anyone that wants a short overview of important moments in American history that were shaped by socialist ideas (sometimes those ideas were a bit ahead of their time; perhaps the better way to say is those ideas shaped American socialism?). The book covers how Thomas Paine, Abraham Lincoln, and Martin Luther King, Jr., among others, were all influenced by socialist ideas and principles. It also is a decent short history of the Socialist Party, including the campaigns of Eugene Debs.
But the most interesting chapter to me was the last one, that talked about the socialist movement since the 1960s until today. While never a major party nationally, the Socialist Party was at its apex a very influential party that won local and state elections. In some cities, socialists were the major party, or at least the major opposition party. Socialists were often invited into Republican and Democratic administrations, as appointees or advisors. Many of the policies and programs that we know and love today - medicare, social security, five-day work week, even public water and sewer -- started as party platform demands of socialists that major party candidates adopted in order to win elections.
Unfortunately, the major parties used World War 1 (and later WW2) to stop the socialist movement. Most socialists opposed the US entering the war and spoke out strongly against it. The major parties passed laws declaring any opposition to the war as "unloyal" to the country, making it illegal with a stiff penalty of years in jail. Therefore many socialist party leaders, including presidential candidate Debs, were thrown in jail for a few years before later on having their sentences commuted. The aggressive attacks against 1st amendment speech had a chilling effect, and the party shrank. The socialist party didn't disappear because it was unpopular, it began to disappear because it was undermined by collusion between the major parties against our constitutional principles of freedom of speech. That undermining led to disagreement between factions within the socialist movement on how to best combat attacks from the major parties.
So the question is, what happened in the 1960s? There was a growing movement for the Republican party to move to the right that echoed many of the civil-war-era arguments for "states' rights". Largely the movement grew as an opposition to the expansion of civil rights, with a purposeful campaign known as the "Southern Strategy". The Republican party as we know it today -- not the party of Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt -- was forming.
To combat that, some socialist leaders, in particular Michael Harrington (who wrote a popular book "The Other America" on poverty, which apparently influenced JFK and Johnson), decided that the best thing to do was to play electoral politics as part of the Democratic Party rather than continuing to fight on in a Socialist Party. Harrington worked with several other activists to establish what would eventually become the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), which focused on putting pressure on the Democratic Party to implement policy rather than the traditional voter education goals of Socialist Party campaigns. Harrington and his activists went to the Democratic conventions to demand more socialist policy as part of the Democratic platform. They were successful getting many ideas written into the platform (at that time, the "most liberal platform in party history"), and were at first embolded by some early steps taken by Carter, but Democratic presidents have utterly failed to ever implement those socialist ideas in the Democratic platform ever since. In fact, the socialist-backed candidates were never picked, and the party instead picked pro-corporate party insiders, with candidates since Dukakis growing more and more weary of calling themselves "liberal" (we see that in today's Democratic candidates that often proudly call themselves "centrists"). With many activists moving to DSA and assisting the Democrats, the Socialist Party essentially died out nationwide (with a few holdovers here and there).
That story really stood out to me as a parallel to our recent elections. To stop Trump, Bernie and many others made the argument to hold the nose and support Democrats and vote for Clinton. Progressives were kicked out of the convention as Clinton nominated Tim Kaine, a fairly conservative Democrat, as her VP pick rather than a more progressive person like Elizabeth Warren or a socialist like Bernie. Several Bernie backers were placed on the party's platform committee earlier in the year, but Clinton-backed members defeated most proposals from the Berniecrats while the items that made it into the platform were essentially ignored by Clinton and her surrogates. Much like how in 2008 many rallied around Obama for hope and change, only to be disappointed when Obama ignored practically all of his progressive policy promises in order to implement a right-wing healthcare plan and continue much of Bush's economic and war policies.
This reaffirms my belief that attempting to work in the current money-dominated two-party system is a failed strategy for progressives and socialists. I knew that Obama and Clinton had no interest in implementing progressives policy, but I was surprised to learn it dates back much further. Progressive and socialist activists within the party have been trying to work with the Democrats for 50 years, only to watch Democrats drift further and further to the right each election. It feels insane to me to think that continuing this strategy will somehow magically work finally in 2018 or 2020, when it hasn't happened yet in 50 years.
It also confirms that third-parties can and do win; the strategy of a strong Socialist Party resisting both Republicans and Democrats has worked in the past to bring about important change. The strategy works because the major parties have to work to win the election. They have to offer better plans than you if they want to win, they cannot rest on status quo that isn't working. In a two-party system, it is too easy to be lazy and say "Well at least I'm not as bad as the other side!" and let the status quo stand, as we have seen for years now. Having third, fourth, fifth parties requires everyone to work harder, and so all Americans win with the best ideas being elected and implemented.
I view the Green Party as the spiritual successor to the Socialist Party. In fact, many Greens refer to the party as "eco-socialist", to emphasize that the Green platform is a combination of de-centralized democratic socialist economic policy with a need to practice ecological wisdom in our industries and economy (publicly-owned production that still spews out pollution is not a longer-term viable option either!). Socialists I think would find a lot in the Green platform that they would love, and probably don't even realize it! Not long ago, I had spoken with a few socialists at a rally in the early days of the Trump presidency, and asked if they'd sign to get a Green candidate on the ballot. They at first said no thanks. When I asked why, it became clear that they thought Greens weren't socialist enough for their support. As I explained the Green platform, they started to perk up, with one person saying "Oh, I didn't know that's what Greens stood for".
I think our challenge is to teach people about the history of socialism in our country - the labor movements, civil rights movement, etc. - and work to correct those misunderstandings of both socialism as a whole and the Green platform specifically. I know my goal is to help grow the Green Party into a strong champion of progressive socialist ideals in the Pittsburgh area. I think we can finish the work that Debs and others started more than 100 years ago, and work for a more just society and economy for all. I invite all others in the area to join the Green Party and help us create that vision.
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