What’s stopping the formation of an American Syriza?
Rather, why aren’t we, as Leftists, working toward such a goal yet?
This piece will answer neither of those fairly large and important questions, and will instead assume that they’ve been settled in the hopes that a rough schematic for creating a Left coalition party–one that can make legitimate challenges in electoral politics–can be envisioned.
That said, I’ve just started reading “Crowds and Party” by Jodi Dean and and it causes me to wonder: what’s stopping us?
I chose to purchase the book after hearing an interview with her on the Majority Report. In the discussion, a left-ish liberal in the form of Sam Seder questions Dean about the existence of an American Left. Seder doesn’t necessarily buy that there is one, but Dean does. Further, she believes that this Left doesn’t know it’s own strength and size. I really, really want to agree with her, but I’m not certain that she’s totally right on that count. Seder on the other hand is patently incorrect that the Left is non-existent and that a Sanders campaign is one of the first steps in building one. My observation and analysis fall in between these two: there is a Left, but it needs to take seriously the tasks of outreach and coalition-building. And that is why this analysis feels scizophrenic to me at times: the Left is there but seems to deny itself, but seems to demonstrate no meaningful willingness to cross Cold War-holdover sectarian lines.
What’s Stopping Us?
Now that that’s out of the way, I posit the following question: why can’t DSA, SPUSA, Socialist Alternative, the Greens, and the other smaller parties (even those RCP psychos) set aside their comparatively small philosophical differences and start organizing at a local level?
Syriza only develops in a unique historical context: austerity bombed-out the Social Democratic consensus of PASOK and required that the most Left members of that party find a new home. Parallel to this, fringe parties, dozens of which were so irrelevant that they stood no realistic chance at electing a Member of Parliament, began to open lines of communication.
What Unites Us?
Anticapitalism. Duh.
The unique qualities of climate change for the provide a uniquely modern reason to make an anticapitalist appeal to the general public. Anticapitalism nowadays is not solely desirable merely as an end in itself because capitalism is evil and yucky, but also because global capitalist economic organization–if left unaltered–will suffocate and drown us. And it will do so in my lifetime. (list party interests in anticap)
What Is To Be Done?
The most important thing in creating a working coalition in the realm of electoral politics is a concrete, discrete demand. One of the central problems with the Occupy movement was an inability to lay out a set of demands due to the horizontal leadership structure and the absolute (and anarcho-liberalism-inspired) deference to the agency of the individual. The Sanders moment and associated movements would do well to remember those two lessons. The diagnosis for what is to be done, then, comes in the form of direct response to those two criticisms.
1) A Congress of Left Parties must be called with the intent of creating a plan for maximizing ballot access, funding, and membership to elect as many Left Alternative candidates as possible, AND
2) This Congress of Left Parties must then adopt a universal economic platform.
Thinking about the circular firing squad qualities of the Left, those two imperatives may seem insane. They are, however, much less contentious and difficult than they appear. Referring to imperative one, the plan to maximize resources is one that, necessarily, will create political equivalents of non-compete clauses (after all, why run a Green and a SPUSA candidate in the same congressional district) that will free up further resources. Those resources can then be used to plant seeds of Left parties outside of the safe blue states where they tend to proliferate; take, as a rough example, SPUSA funds in Nebraska being redirected to the Green party because the prior efforts by BOLD Nebraska suggest that they would be more amenable to social democracy framed as conservationism than the frame that SPUSA uses.
Keeping in mind that the uniting, galvanizing truth of the coalition of the Left Alternative is anticapitalism, the explicitly socialist parties must be willing to accept a more moderate, environmentalism-based avenue simply because the ends are united in purpose.
“In that same vein, I wonder if maybe the Democrats stand as much of a chance of having a party breakup as the Republicans? Everyone is talking about the distance between the GOP base and elites, but the distance in the Democratic party isn’t insignificant. I personally hope that both collapse, and that the remaining two parties are a Left Labor party versus a party of Capital made up of the remnants of the establishment GOP and the DLC Clintonite Dems. I can dream.”
“I feel bad this morning, sure, but the exit polling regarding the youth is still the most encouraging thing to me. For the first time, I’m now torn between whether agitating outside of the Democratic party is the best route, or whether the demographics of the “Bernie Coalition” suggest that–with some hard, hard work–the Democratic party has already started the shift to a social democratic party.
For now, though, the Democratic party is a sclerotic party of capital. They’ve not done anything to earn my vote–save that they’re NOT Republicans. Vote for Hillary in the general if you live in a swing state, sure. But you’d better fucking vote in the off year, and if you really wanted to make a change, you should run for local office. I think it’s high time that the JeffCo school board or the Golden City Council here in CO had a Socialist Board Member, don’t you guys?”