First Published: Frontline, Vol. 6, No. 9, October 24, 1988.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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Different trends and organizations arrived at their current positions from different directions. But by and large, the bulk of forces on the U.S. left reached the same conclusion about where to locate themselves in the 1988 election drama.
Across the spectrum from left social democrats through Marxist-Leninists, organizations and individual activists generally lined up behind Jesse Jackson as the standard-bearer of progressive politics in the spring primary season. They now advocate, if grudgingly, a vote for Dukakis to keep George Bush out of the White House this November. This convergence of the immediate, practical positions of the main currents on the U.S. left continues and develops a trend which began to be visible in 1984.
To be sure, significant strategic and ideological differences among left forces have hardly disappeared. Also, the similarity of official positions is not at all matched by active cooperation and direct dialogue between the major organized parties and tendencies. For these reasons, it is often difficult to recognize from in close that anything much has changed in a left that has long been characterized by fragmentation and division.
But stepping back and thinking in terms of the left’s evolution over the last two decades, what stands out is the trend toward similar practical positions. This is an extremely important development with wide implications for the inevitable post-election assessment of how best to advance the popular movements after November and how the left can break out of its longstanding weakness and lack of influence in shaping national politics.
It’s not new for the left social democratic current in U.S. politics to be backing a Democratic Party presidential nominee. If anything, this current, whose main organizational expression is the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and most influential publication is In These Times newspaper, has long based its strategy on the premise that the only way to engage in serious left politics in the U.S. is to work in the Democratic Party. What is a shift for the self-described democratic socialist trend is giving explicit backing to a progressive insurgency in the Democratic Party which is under the leadership of Jesse Jackson. DSA gave Jackson its official endorsement in the Democratic primaries this year, a step which the organization refused to take in 1984. And while In These Times criticized DSA taking this formal position (and senior editor John Judis kept gushing about Richard Gephardt), the paper’s editorials consistently pointed to the political significance of the Jackson effort, terming it a “historical breakthrough.”
The bulk of left social democracy had to tinker with a number of its longstanding assumptions to get behind Jackson. While long arguing that the key to relevant politics was moving the Democratic Party to the left, backing Jackson meant following the leadership of a Black candidate and accepting the fact that the current standard-bearer for progressive politics had his core base in the Black community; and did not arise out of the motion of organized labor. (It also meant going along with a stance on Palestinian rights that goes against the Zionist inclinations of many elements of this trend.)
These were not positions that came automatically or easily to the dominant forces in U.S. democratic socialism. But faced with the mass momentum of the Jackson campaign and insistent support for Jackson among the relatively small but important sector of minority activists who function within organized left social democracy, a DSA endorsement was won. It would be overly optimistic to read this endorsement as marking the end of the racial blindspot that has afflicted most of this trend. On the other hand, it marks the positive resolution of the main political question which DSA had been debating ever since 1984. And it puts left social democracy in a different relationship to the most vital progressive current in U.S. politics-as well as to the rest of the left-than it had previously.
The Communist Party USA has also made a certain shift, on a tactical level, in its approach to the electoral battleground compared to 1984. The CPUSA has not altered its strategic outlook, which emphasizes the need for working class and popular forces to forge a mass political expression independent of the two-party system, and stresses that organized labor must play a leading role in that process. It also continues to stress that the electoral fight must be viewed through the framework of creating a broad, all-people’s front against Reaganism. But relative to 1984 – when the CPUSA pointed to the AFL-CIO’s early endorsement of Mondale as an expression of labor’s political independence – the party gave significantly more prominence to the Jackson effort as the key instrument for progressive electoral mobilization, and to the Rainbow Coalition as an organizing vehicle.
Some of the sharpest formulations were found in an article by National Executive Committee member James Steele in the September/October issue of Political Affairs. Steele singled the Jackson effort out for its “unique contribution” and criticized those who “hesitated [and] equivocated“ on backing Jackson for “a failure to correctly estimate where millions of Americans are, politically and ideologically.” In effect, these phrases contain an element of self-criticism, whether Steele intended it or not.
In another shift from 1984 – in fact from CPUSA practice of the last 20 years – the party is not running its own presidential ticket in 1988 (though it is running many local and state candidates), and explicitly calls for a vote for Dukakis. The CPUSA explains its decision as a practical protest against increasingly undemocratic election laws and signature requirements. The upshot of the decision, though, is not only to avoid putting resources into ballot access efforts that face greater restrictions than previously. It means that the CPUSA’s tactics for advancing independent political action are in closer alignment with broader forces – especially the Jackson coalition.
A different sort of shift altogether has taken place among those left currents – largely originating out of the mass flow of the 1960s – who have identified with revolutionary politics and in years past have shunned electoral involvement, especially in the Democratic Party. The shift among the most forward looking of these forces – who hold quite diverse when ideological allegiances – is not so much between tactics in 1984 and tactics in 1988 as it is between ultra-leftism in the 1970s and greater maturity in the 1980s. This did not come about by first discovering electoral politics and then Jesse Jackson, but by grasping the significance of the social motion behind Jackson and moving with it into the electoral arena. In 1988, this generally meant throwing considerable energy into the Jackson primary effort and recognizing that it really makes a difference – both on immediate matters of government policy and to set favorable terrain for the maturation of the progressive movement – if Dukakis can beat Bush in November.
This newspaper and the Line of March organization, for example, have seen the Jackson campaigns of both 1984 and 1988 as the most vital mass expressions of progressive sentiment in contemporary U.S. politics and have given prime importance to trying to build the Rainbow Coalition. (For this column’s audience, there is no reason to condense here the extensive analysis contained in Frontline over the last several years.)
The League of Revolutionary Struggle (LRS), whose identification is still with the Maoist ideological tradition, also stresses the importance of the Jackson effort and the Rainbow and advocates a vote for Dukakis. In Quite a swing from its New Communist Movement origins; the group seems to share the optimism of left social democracy regarding the potential of transforming the Democratic Party into a popular vehicle. Also, LRS’ Jackson/Rainbow activism is characterized by a narrow focus on gaining organizational positions for the group’s members while blocking efforts for broader left cooperation.
The Communist Labor Party (CLP) is giving more public prominence to electoral activism than in the past. The CLP argues that the “electoral arena is the current battleground in the struggle for survival” in a time of mounting economic crisis. Its perspective on the next step forward is summed up in the call to “Defeat Bush, Defend the Jackson Program.”
Among forces more loosely organized, an important network in the constellation of forces behind Jackson is the National Committee for Independent Political Action (NCIPA). NCIPA activists – many well-positioned after years of work in various social movements – were among the first on the left to get behind the Jackson effort in 1984 and have continued to devote prime attention to building the Jackson campaign and the Rainbow Coalition through 1988. As its name implies, NCIPA is not built on the basis of adherence to one particular left ideological tradition. Rather, its main unity resides in the political goal of building a “broad, mass-based people’s party.” NCIPA’s strategy is to work both “inside and outside“ the Democratic Party, building fully independent forms wherever possible, while “paying careful attention to the struggle within the Democratic Party with an eye toward helping to quicken the pace of a break-away.” As the Jackson effort has gathered momentum, the “inside” aspect of NCIPA’s strategy has inevitably come to the fore.
The small Freedom Road Socialist Organization, which comes out of the Maoist tradition and publishes the magazine Forward Motion, also is deployed behind Jackson and the Rainbow.
Finally, no survey of significant forces on the left would be complete without mention of the broad current of activists whose political work is focused within Black and other minority communities and who are often categorized, not correctly in every case, as “revolutionary nationalists.” Many such forces were generated by the anti-racist upsurge of the 1960s and rejected the Democratic Party as a vehicle for political struggle, abstaining from electoral politics or experimenting with such forms as the National Black Independent Political Party or the Black United Front. The new motion of Black politics, largely centered in the electoral bid for Black empowerment at all levels of government, has drawn many of these activists into the campaigns of Democratic Black candidates, including the Jackson effort. While no single organization or network embodies this current, it is a crucial component of the left forces now operative on electoral terrain, especially in urban areas and the South.
Left out of this review are the Trotskyist formations and such political cults as the New Alliance Party (see Frontline, July18) which stand aside from the mass progressive motion based on the dogma that work on Democratic Party terrain is an unacceptable compromise of principle. Such groups are, increasingly marginalized and set off from the main trend of the left’s development. The next article in this series will examine the underlying reasons why the most serious and mature forces on the left find themselves moving in similar directions, and what this implies about how to maximize left influence in the years ahead