The New Party. This locally based independent left party, known for its cross-endorsing “fusion” tactics with progressive Democrats, was one small exception. It did not participate in the presidential race nationally, but where it did implement its tactics locally, it made gains. As Jay Schaffner summed up the New Party affiliate in New York: “In New York, the bright light is that of the Working Families Party”. On Election Day, they had some 3000 trade unionists, CORN members and others out on the streets, at the polls. The WFP vote climbed from just over 50,000 for Vallone two years ago, to somewhere between 102,000 and 110,000. The WFP vote doubled! The WFP is now the number four party in New York; previously it was number eight. (It should be noted that the total Nader vote in New York State was double that of the vote for the Working Families Party.) The WFP ran a slate of its own local candidates, but cross-endorsed Hilary Clinton and Al Gore on its own ballot line.

The Vermont Progressive Party, which endorsed Nader nationally, also did well. It won a number of local races and candidate for governor did better than ten percent.

What about the socialist left? It ran a few candidates in a number of states, notably David McReynolds from the Socialist Party and Monica Moorehead from the Workers World Party. Obviously, socialism in the U.S. doesn’t speak with one voice. Some organizations, such as the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism and the Democratic Socialists of America, were clearly divided between Nader and Gore supporters. Some are close to Nader’s anti-corporate united front, but with a greater emphasis on minority nationalities and women. Others hold to older formulas for an anti-monopoly united front or anti-imperialist united front. Those leaning to the ultra left hold to some versions of a united front of the working class against capital, while those leaning to more moderate positions uphold equally dated versions of the united front against fascism or the all-people’s front against reaction.

What all of these socialist approaches have in common is that they haven’t changed much in at least 25 years. And with a few notable exceptions, the tactics that derive from these ossified strategies haven’t produced anything for their advocates beyond continued isolation at the margins of political life. Some even have strategic principles, but no tactics at all. Others have a variety of tactics, but no strategy. Even when they win a battle, the gains soon evaporate. Moreover, nearly all varieties of the socialist left are without any independent electoral base organizations that have been built up over the years.

A New Proposal on Strategy

What do we need to win elections and build the independent left in American politics? First, we need a good strategy, one that not only determines friends and enemies in a general way, but concretely, in the battles before us today. Just to name imperialism or corporate capitalism doesn’t help much. We need to know which sectors of capital are currently the most dangerous, most reactionary and greatest obstacles to human progress today. We need to narrow the target and focus our fire on the worse and most dangerous of the bunch in a way that takes advantage of divisions in their ranks. This enables us to form broader alliances among the masses and to find tactical allies that we can use to develop our strength.

We are not in a revolutionary situation or crisis. Socialism itself is not on the electoral agenda or even a matter for mass agitation at this time. This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be serious about socialism. To the contrary, we need to be very serious about it, but mainly as a matter of theoretical development and revolutionary education. The process of critiquing the failed, second-wave, anti-market socialism of the last century still has to be deepened, so that a third wave socialism—ecological, market-employing, high-tech, globalist and radically democratic—can be further developed.

What we urgently need now, however, is a strategic vision and ensuing set of tactics appropriate to enhancing the political and economic preconditions for a third wave socialism in a non-revolutionary situation. In fact, it is precisely how well we can develop our forces in these conditions, which may last a long time that will determine our ability to act decisively in periods of upheaval and crisis.

I have argued elsewhere that we need to take up the new strategic thinking put out by the Center for Labor and Community Research. It calls for the formation of a broad alliance against speculative capital, especially the low-road globalists whose financial manipulations are deepening poverty and creating havoc with labor and environmental standards in this country and across the world.

Notice that this is not a broad alliance against all capitalists, all big corporations or even all global multinationals. Instead it singles out a particular grouping of parasites who do little to organize new wealth or productive forces, but mainly manipulate market inequalities to loot and pillage. It seeks a strategic relationship with progressive “third sector” capital, such as nonprofit institutions and employee-owned firms. It leaves open the possibility and the desirability of tactical alliances with productive capital, even very large but productive corporations with a global reach. It distinguishes between high road and low-road capital strategies, between those who, on one hand, want to level down working conditions and wreck the environment and those who, on the other hand, want to develop a high-skill, high-design, sustainable future.

Here’s just one example. According to a November 22, 2000 report by American Viewpoint, a GOP polling firm, a poll of the Fortune 5000 finds U.S. business executives split on the Kyoto Protocol, the international treaty being negotiated, with the help of Al Gore, to halt global warming:

“Thirty-four percent of business executives polled said they support ratification of the agreement by the U.S. Senate, 26 percent opposed it, and 38 percent had no opinion.... U.S. business executives are not monolithically opposed to the Kyoto Protocol, as some lobby groups would like everyone to believe,” Philips Clapp, president of the National Environment Trust, which commissioned the poll, said today. “More than a third actually support Senate ratification of the treaty, and roughly another third say they don't have enough information to make a decision,” he said.

“The poll also found that 75 percent of Fortune 5000 executives believe that global warming is a serious problem. Arguments by the Global Climate Coalition and other groups that the scientific evidence of global warming is inadequate seem to have been rejected by a majority of business executives. Fifty?five percent of those polled said that majority of the evidence supports the existence of global warming or that it is established scientific fact.”

Does this mean an end to class struggle against capitalists in any anti-low road alliance? Of course not. In fact a critical form of class struggle is precisely to engage and challenge these class forces on firmly taking the high road rather than the low road, to curb their own speculative, “make money rather than create value” tendencies, and to adjust and focus the struggle on the main targets at a given time.

“Government has a responsibility, not to redistribute the wealth of citizens, but to provide the underprivileged with the skills and opportunities to create their own wealth.... For the most part, Democratic liberalism, instead of creating opportunities for people to enter the mainstream, has sought to ‘buy out’ the less fortunate by creating a system of government that actually disempowers those most in need by giving them less control over their lives. And by promoting the redistribution of income rather than the creation of new wealth and new opportunities for investment, liberals have consigned people in need to the sidelines, where they remain dependent for their survival on the largesse of the state and the decisions of bureaucrats.”