A burning task at this political juncture is the setting in motion of a mass movement of working people toward independent politics.
At this point we should define what we mean by “independent politics.” But before doing that, before discussing political strategy, we need to ensure that we share the same political goals. Without that, this whole presentation is meaningless. I assume that we all seek fundamental social change and an end to this barbaric and irrational, utterly destructive system.
Dancers know that the way to be able to keep spinning around without getting dizzy is to keep one’s eyes fixed on one point. The same is true in politics. In all the twists and turns of political life, the way to keep one’s balance is to keep one’s eyes fixed on the final goal. There are many on the Left who believe — or who act as if they believe —— that they need not worry too much about that final goal, because if one keeps putting one foot in front of the other, one will arrive there, sooner or later. All one has to worry about is making progress. And what is “making progress,” according to their way of thinking? Reforms. Reforms, in their view, are the stepping—stones to the new society.
There are others — painfully few at present — who look at it the other way around. That is, they see the necessity for every step to be conditioned by that final goal, for every step to be evaluated by the criterion of whether it truly represents a step toward the final goal. For history has shown that while reforms can move society closer to the final goal of a humane economic and political system, they can also serve to push society further from that goal, can serve to split the people, disorganize them or encourage harmful illusions as to who are their friends, illusions as to how meaningful change can be accomplished, illusions as to the nature of the system Itself.
We shall assume that we are agreed on our goal, which is a society where the great wealth-producing engines are in the’ hands of the working people, and where the levers of political power are also in their hands, a society where the economic, political, social and cultural institutions are shaped to serve the interests of the great majority of the people.
So, if we are in agreement on this goal, then the question is who will be in the army that fights for such a society? In the main — and there will be exceptions, of course–it will be those whose interests demand fundamental change, those who suffer the worst effects of exploitation and oppression but yet have not become completely demoralized, those for whom some patchwork reform will not materially affect the essential bitterness of their lives, those who have little to lose by uncompromising struggle, those who, when the times demand it, will be ready to make the necessary sacrifices.
We are speaking here of the lower strata of the working people, the poor, the nationally oppressed, and in particular the African-American people.
Permit me here to state the elementary and the obvious. I do so just for the sake of the logical development of this presentation. In this society, it is the large banks and corporations that dominate the country’s politics. The institutions, such as the courts, the legislatures, the executive power — President, governors, mayors — are there to advance corporate interests and to do the corporate bidding. A party system has been perfected, a two-party system, which is an obedient tool of the plutocracy. The beauty of this system is that it is masked. It pretends to serve all the people. And the people, for the most part, have bought into this myth. Here I wish to emphasize what is still not well understood even by much of the Left: That there is a division of labor between the two parties, that they each have very specific functions, and that they operate in tandem. This is hidden by a half-mock and half-real competition between them.
History shows that those who rule over the vast majority of humankind do so in basically two ways: either by sheer force and terror, by repressing discontent, or by trying to appease discontent by granting the minimal possible concessions or reforms which, while not completely satisfying the people’s demands, while addressing only some of them, manage to take sufficient steam out of the anger and mobilization of the discontented that the threat to the rulers abates or is made more manageable. In general, the plutocracy rules by alternating between repression and reform, but usually both methods are resorted to simultaneously in one proportion or another.
The plutocracy is not homogeneous. They comprise different special interests. But they are united by a general interest. In addition, there are usually differences of opinion within the plutocracy as to the most effective tactics in defending the common interest. There is a wing of the plutocracy that tends to be more flexible and far-sighted from the standpoint of their own interests, more ready to make concessions to the masses at home and more subtle in protecting their positions abroad. These are the liberals, the reformers, sometimes the “moderates.” By offering limited support to the partial interests of the working people they maintain their influence over them, and as a result, the working people are normally inclined to trust them.
But even when the masses have come to distrust them, see that the interests they uphold are really come to see that the interests they uphold are different from their own, alien, even hostile, there is still a great reluctance to break with them. For despite everything, they appear to be preferable to the reactionaries who oppose every progressive demand at home and who believe in cracking down with an iron fist on the people’s movements both at home and abroad.
Thus, the more flexible representatives of the plutocracy are seen as the “lesser of the two evils”–and it is considered cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face if one refuses to support this “lesser of the two evils.”
It is the responsibility of radicals, those who have the goals we talked about at the outset, to expose the harmfulness of this kind of thinking, since by following a wing of the plutocracy, however liberal they may appear at any given moment, one is following those who have a vital interest in maintaining the status quo in its essentials, no matter how prepared they are to tinker with details. By following the representatives of the plutocracy, no matter how liberal they may appear, one is guaranteed never to reach that new society which is our goal, which means that one is condemned to a system that will produce ever growing numbers of people in ever-deepening wretchedness, material, cultural and moral.
Unfortunately, a sizable portion of the radicals unfortunately are failing in their duty in this regard. They, too, buy into the “lesser of two evils” theory. They spend most of their time attacking the ultra-Right, the reactionaries — the Gingriches, Patakis and Giulianis — while avoiding criticism of the liberals and moderates because they believe that such criticism would jeopardize the building of an anti-reactionary coalition. In this way, they cede political leadership to the “milder” wing of the oppressors.
Their reasoning proceeds along arithmetic lines: Seeing the small numbers in the ranks of the radicals and the considerably greater numbers and apparently greater strength of the liberals and moderates, they calculate that improvements in the conditions of the people requires falling in behind the liberals and moderates. They do not understand the real motion of history, which has nothing to do with arithmetic, and which has demonstrated on countless occasions that it is precisely by exposing the liberals and the moderates by educating the people as to whose interests the liberals really serve, who they really represent — that it is only in this way that meaningful social change has ever taken place.
In pursuing its policy of alliances, many on the Left hide their opportunism behind the word “progressive”. They say they wish to build a “progressive” movement and they call for unity of all “progressives”. That is fine as long as we properly identify who the progressives really are. To those seeking a new society, progressives must be consistent democrats–with a lowercase d. They are those who work for the people’s empowerment. Progressives are not those who endorse paternalistic measures involving the distribution of a greater or lesser amount of crumbs to the “unfortunate”, “underprivileged”, etc. Progressives do not call for “compassion”, they demand for the people what is rightfully theirs. Progressives encourage mass struggle–they encourage mass initiatives and insist on the accountability of leadership to the masses.
Progressives are not like liberals who are afraid of the independent activity of the masses, activity that escapes their control. They are not those who, like the liberals, while wishing to curb somewhat the aggressiveness and unlimited appetite of the military-industrial complex, at the same time subscribe to the political premises on which the military-industrial complex operates. They are not those who prate about their opposition to racism while fighting every striving of the African-American masses for self-determination. Progressives do not, as do the liberals, deplore poverty and racism and then balance the blame for the conditions caused by poverty and racism between victimizers and the victims.
The opportunist Left, when they talk about “progressives,” are really referring to the liberals, and the alliance they seek is an alliance where the Left is the tail to the liberal kite.
Independent politics, simply put, as far as the working people are concerned, is politics that serves the interests of the working people. It is the opposite of dependent politics, which means allowing oneself to be dependent upon, to be taken in tow by, the more reform—minded section of the Establishment. Or it means trailing behind the middle classes, which history has shown are incapable of leading a consistent, uncompromising struggle against the plutocracy.
Independent politics, if it is to be truly independent, means independence in terms of (1) organization; (2) program; (3) tactics; and (4) ideology. A step towards independence on any of these fronts is desirable and should be supported, but the ultimate objective of the new society cannot be achieved without independence on every front.
What is organizational independence? Organizational independence has two major components: since political struggle is waged in part through political parties, it means creating and building a party of the working people, one in which the enemies of the working people are not permitted to participate, and the most important: one in which the money of the enemies of the working people is not permitted to determine its direction. The working people in many countries of the world, and in virtually every industrialized nation, have at least progressed in their understanding to the point where they recognize the need to have their own political parties and political leaders. Only in the United States have the people failed to recognize this elementary need.
It is, of course, the Democratic Party that today is viewed as the “lesser of the two evils.” It is illusions in the Democratic Party that constitute the greatest obstacle to the formation of an independent party, a party of the working people. These illusions are not only shared by the masses, and perhaps not even so much by the masses, as by those who consider themselves politically sophisticated, including the great bulk of the Left today. They continue to work for the Democratic Party, involve themselves in Democratic Party politics, in the democratic Party’s internal struggles around candidates and issues.
Another way in which independent politics can be expressed organizationally — and it is an extremely important way —— is through the activity of mass organizations — community groups, labor unions, single—issue organizations, women’s groups, organizations of oppressed peoples. These organizations should be vehicles of independent politics. That means they should not allow themselves to be co opted by the two parties but should act in confrontation to them and their representatives in office. The popular organizations should eventually become the nucleus of the new party, and one of their tasks is to prepare the people for the independent party’s formation, even if such a party is not immediately on the horizon.
There are those who confine the notion of independent politics to the organizational side, and particularly to the question of a mass third party. But to achieve that society of which we have spoken, more is needed. The third party must have a program that addresses itself to the fundamental needs of the people, and that therefore means its program must seriously challenge the power and wealth of the elite. The program, in other words, must sharply break with the limits imposed by the Establishment as to what is “acceptable. ” The program must be one that cannot be accommodated by the corporations, by the rich.
Further, the means of struggle, the tactics of the movement, must not be confined within the bounds of the rules laid down by the power structure. Thus, while all forms of struggle have their uses and are appropriate at given moments, it is mass mobilization and mass action, action which overflows the safe and conventional channels of the “loyal opposition,” that represents the sharpest declaration of independence of the working and oppressed peoples.
Finally, the working people need to achieve ideological independence, that is, they need to absorb a consistent set of political and cultural values that truly represent their interests, a way of thinking that reflects and. assists in arriving at their ultimate aim, which is the elimination of all forms of exploitation and the fullest development of the infinite capacities of the human species. Just as the Democratic Party is the main organizational obstacle to independent politics, so middle class liberalism is the main ideological obstacle.
It is not necessary to wait for the birth of a national party to set independent politics in motion. It can begin by mass organizations throwing the gauntlet down to the political institutions of the elite. It can be done by launching a campaign of political education that exposes the entire rotten political system with all its supporting actors. Independent politics can begin with running just one candidate that projects a new kind of politics. It doesn’t matter what the office is, mayor or school board member. But the politics must be that new kind of politics where candidates do not nominate themselves but are selected by popular organizations, where contributions are screened to ensure that it is only the people who finance the campaign. The new politics demands that were elected, the office holder must behave like a real tribune of the people, exposing the machinations of the Establishment politicians, turning over excessive salary to the popular organizations, following the people’s behests, reporting to them on a consistent basis, and helping to mobilize popular resistance.
I have often written of the central role that the struggle against racism plays in the political life of this country, as well as the leadership role that African-Americans must play if there is to be meaningful social change. The degree to which we succeed in breaking with traditional politics and developing an independent alternative will depend in large measure on initiatives coming from the African-American community, and particularly from that portion of the leadership responsive to the needs of the ghettos. There is no doubt that the ghetto is a tangle of pathological conditions. To deny this is to indulge in romanticism. But the pathology of the ghetto is the consequence of a far greater pathology of white—supremacist society. To fail to see this is to be blind to the fundamental sickness of this system. At the same time, the ghetto is potentially the healthiest place in America precisely because of its profound alienation. And it is down the road of that alienation that the country as a whole will have to reconstruct its humanity and to build a system fit for that humanity.
