Time to act like a real Party?
WEISDERAL RESERVE NOTEIR
THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
* USA Jane Slaughter discusses the challenges facing the Labor Party, one year after its founding convention in Cleveland, Ohio When 1,367 delegates gathered for the Labor Party's founding convention in June 1996, they took a step toward transforming the political agenda of the U.S. trade union movement. This is the first serious attempt to build a labor party in the U.S. since the late 1940's. It is the first time that most active unionists and socialists have been able to
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DOLLAR discuss an independent, working class-based party in a tangible way.
When Tony Mazzocchi, a former dissident, now leader within the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers (OCAW), founded Labor Party Advocates in 1991, the notion of independent class politics moved out of the realm of Trotskyist canon and into the light of day. Five years later, the new party was born. Today, locals and national unions with hundreds of thousands of members officially support a labor party. Deep disenchantment with the Democratic Party in some sectors of the union movement has helped to bring the idea of class political independence from the margins to the edges of the mainstream. And although this labor party is quite peculiar in some respects, it says most of the right things about why working people need class independence. The majority of its members want it to become a party that gives workers their own voice in politics. For that reason alone, it has the potential - no guarantee, but the potential - to foster class awareness and No candidates yet
But this is a decidedly odd kind of party. The second point in its new recruitment brochure asks: "Is the Labor Party running candidates?" And answers, "No" This has led some on the left to wonder whether the Labor Party's leaders intend it to be anything more than a party on paper. The Progressive quoted a delegate from Pittsburgh: "I think some of [the national union leaderships] would be entirely satisfied if LPA just became a pressure group within the AFLCIO and the Democratic Party." Alexander Cockburn and Joanne Wypijewski speculated, in The Nation, that "what was founded in Cleveland may wind up as a faction of the Democratic Party." I would argue that the Labor Party's leaders do want an independent party even though their strategy for becoming one is to conciliate those who do not yet want to be independent.
At the convention, some speakers on the floor called for the Labor Party to break with the Democrats. Now!" Members of various small leftist groups repeat this phrase 22 International Viewpoint over and over, implying that anything less than a dramatic walk-out is a sellout. But as Ellen David Friedman, a leader of the Progressive Alliance party in Vermont, has pointed out, "breaking with the Democrats is something you do over and over and over"
The Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees (BMWE) railroad union, for example, decided to support the labor party project because of their experience: successive strikes were broken by successive Democratic Presidents and Congresses. Those who "broke with the Democrats" before they were ever with the Democrats often fail to understand the ragged nature of this process. For socialists who were never interested in the Democrats in the first place, "breaking" with them is easy. For many others, including people in the Labor Party, it will be like the smoker who quits over and over again until finally the "break with cigarettes" takes and lasts. Union support
The new Labor Party faces a number of problems. The party's "chapters" city-wide bodies made up of members of various unions — are somewhat segregated from the main endorsing unions. Local unions and internationals affiliate with the party directly, and, although the unions may encourage their activists to join the Labor Party, those activists are not required to join, much less be active in, the chapters.
The founding convention was called by four national unions — OCAW, United Electrical Workers (UE), BMWE and the West Coast International Longshore Workers Union (ILWU). (Shortly before the convention, the United Mine Workers and the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) also endorsed, but brought few delegates.) Members of an endorsing union are not very likely to be members of one of the chapters, and not much is asked of them beyond their dues. Many or most of the delegates from the main endorsing unions had never attended an LPA meeting before the founding convention. Integration of the two types of members, chapter and endorsing union, appears difficult: in large areas of the country the four relatively small core unions do not exist at all, or only barely.
At the convention, some votes showed a division between the "front of the hall" — the union delegates - and the "back of the hall" - chapters and individual members. The original draft of the party constitution contained no provision for chapters, which were added by amendment. Chapters held their own separate convention in March 1997, with no decision-making power, and selected five representatives (with a total of one vote) to the party's Interim National Council. The other votes are held by representatives of the main participating unions and by members added to promote ethnic and gender diversity.
Given that many chapters are not particularly habitable for non- leftists, the party has a problem. In many locations, chapters consist nearly exclusively of leftists, and sometimes sectarian leftists play a big role. As a result, many other progressives have decided that such a soapbox (or sandbox) is not worth their time. In other chapters, members who want to reach out have not succeeded in recruiting and retaining many
Given these problems, it is difficult to see how the chapters in many cities can be transformed, unless they develop projects that attract workers as members. A non-electoral strategy
The Cleveland convention voted not to run or even endorse candidates now. Instead. it adopted "a new organising approach to politics [to] promote a new agenda by recruiting and mobilising hundreds of thousands of working people to engage in common non-electoral political activities throughout the year, not just on election day."
In spring 1997, the party launched its non-electoral political project: gathering petition signatures to amend the U.S. constitution to guarantee the right to a job at a living wage (defined, in 1997 dollars, as
At first glance, such a campaign seems perfect for the Labor Party. In this era of downsizing, the notion of the right to a job directly challenges corporate prerogatives. But the campaign also seems to be at odds with Mazzocchi's maxims that you have to walk before you can run, and that defeats are bad for morale (see below). Everyone remembers the failure of the most recent progressive attempt to amend the constitution, the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) for women, which was raised in a far less conservative time and was far less threatening to corporate interests.
be able to play the role of a cross-union group that will undertake actions which the local Central Labor Council will not. In other places, though, activists will feel, "Why do I need another hat to wear to do the things I'm already doing?" In California, for example, the Labor Party supported the Patient Protecton Act to rein in managed care corporations, but one didn't need to be part of the Labor Party to work on that campaign.
Those who are totally committed to the Labor Party as a long-term goal will want to channel whatever work they can into the Labor Party. Other activists will be indifferent. The challenge is to find projects that are not simply meant to keep Labor Party members busy or visible, but to attract people who are not already Labor Party supporters. The obvious choice is running candidates, but the party leadership, at this point, is
USA * party should engage in bourgeois electoral politics in 1996, and higher-ups in the union bureaucracy arguing, at least ostensibly, for building a movement in the streets. But it was not only the hard left that wanted the Labor Party to run candidates in the foreseeable future. The UE and the ILWU both backed electoral action, although at the convention the UE supported a compromise formulation, backed by the OCAW, saying that political strategy would be re-discussed in 1998. And many local officers from the first four endorsing internationals also say that they want to run candidates.
Given the party's fledgling condition, the convention was right to decide not to run candidates at first. Nowhere was a chapter in good enough shape to do so. But in the long run, if the party is to grow, it will have to run in elections. Running candidates says
The "living wage" amendment is of course a propaganda campaign that has no chance of passage. Although many members initially regarded this project as make-work, MY FELLOW AMERICANS - THE BRiDGE TO
TETWENTY FiRST CENTURY STARTS HERE! designed to keep members busy and their minds off the question of running candidates, many have now decided to get on board and give the campaign a try. It remains to be seen how long the project will last.
Although this is the party's national campaign, heavily promoted by the Labor Party national office, chapters are also free to devise their own local projects, in line with the party platform, as long as they do not back candidates. But why should anyone join a new organisation calling itself a "party" in order to work on non-electoral campaigns? There are other organisations that do that. Jobs with Justice, a coalition of labor and community organisations, for instance, is an already-existing national organisation with chapters in many cities, that works on local campaigns of various sorts. Why would anyone not already convinced that a labor party is an important idea join the Labor Party to do non-electoral work, rather than Jobs with Justice, which has a track record?
In Detroit, for example, the Labor Party chapter has given a great deal of support to the unions in the town's newspaper strike That work has won some recruits among strikers and a good name for some Labor Party members. But there are other organisations involved in strike support; the Labor Party was not needed to fill a hole.
Local living wage campaigns have been mentioned as possible projects for local Labor Party chapters. Campaigns initiated by the New Party and/or local trade unions put measures on the ballot last year in many cities and states from Missouri to Oregon, pressuring the city council or state legislature to set a minimum wage (usually $6.50-$8.00) for all workers in the jurisdiction, or at least for those whose emplovers have city contracts or who have received citv subsidies.
But for the local activist who wants to achieve a living wage, the question again arises: why use the Labor Party as the vehicle, rather than the local AFL-CIO, with its far greater resources, or the New Party, which has more experience?
In some places a local Labor Party may firmly opposed to this step. Elections: pitfalls and opportunities
The approach adopted in Cleveland says the party will rely on "building a movement that... force[s] elected officials and candidates to speak to our issues as we define them." In other words, rather than electing candidates of our own, we will build a movement so strong that existing politicians will be obliged to do our will. Mazzocchi often gives the example of the success of the anti-abortion movement and of the right, in general, in changing the context of American politics. In a pre-convention interview, he said, "I'm best informed by the success of the right in reshaping the whole national debate just by the use of language. They have reframed the entire national debate. You create a climate." (Of course, the right has engaged aggressively in electoral politics, locally and nationally, as well as "creating a climate.") Mazzocchi argues that the only outcome of running candidates is either defeat and demoralisation, or victory followed by sellout followed by demoralisation.
At the convention, we witnessed the rather odd spectacle of members of the revolutionary left arguing passionately that the something that no other type of political work does. It says, "Our class should take power." When the Labor Party runs candidates for Congress and President on its (mostly excellent) platform, it will be saying, in effect, "We don't buy corporate competitiveness as the organising principle of society. Working people should take the wealth from
" Merely pressuring existing politicians and candidates does not say that.
"We're just another pressure group on the professional politicians, who will always be in charge."
It is unlikely that simply by engaging in creative grass roots actions the Labor Party can replicate the civil rights movement (as some members have suggested) and develop a crusade that progresses in a straight line till it has "hundreds of thousands of members." In the best of all possible labor parties, action in the streets would interact with the more top-down activity of election campaigns. Softly, softly
So why isn't the Labor Party acting like a party? Because, for the time being, at least, the party leaders growth strategy is to do nothing that would deter any national or local
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* USA union president from getting his or her union to endorse and commit funds. That means that the Labor Party should not compete with the Democrats, with whom most union leaders, at the national and the local level, are thoroughly entwined. For many Labor Party members who are local union officials, raising money for and asking favours of Democratic politicians is part of a well-established way of life, and they are not inclined to risk changing it. As Tony Mazzocchi has said, the idea of running candidates, for these officials, has "a chilling effect."
This is particularly true for public sector unions and in cities and states where a union is large enough to have some influence in internal party workings. The UAW in Michigan is a good example — and UAW local leaders have stayed away from the Labor Party in droves. AFGE's Political Director says he sees no contradiction in the