I will begin this with emphasis that there are multiple socialist/communist third party candidates running for office this year, including Cornel West and Claudia de la Cruz of the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL). All third party leftists should rejoice at the plurality of leftist candidates on the ballot, something unseen perhaps since the days of Eugene Debs (tho I am open to correction if there was such an occurrence during the interwar period). I believe that multiple third party leftists on the ballot needs to be recognized as a great advancement that augurs the possibility of greater Leftist unity, a major goal of Louis Proyect's efforts in creating MarxMail. I spent the period of 2016-2020 organizing with the Greens in RI. That is noteworthy for two reasons. First, RI is bordered by two New England states that one can drive to within minutes, MA and CT. Second, MA is the home state of Jill Stein. In the period of working to build a sustainable Green Party in RI, I repeatedly dealt with red-baiting opposition from longtime members who were responsible for the 2004 Green "Safe State" strategy that prevented Ralph Nader from gaining the presidential nomination and instead nominated David Cobb. One of them, Greg Gerritt, authored a self-published memoir about 2004, Green Party Tempest, that I have available on Internet Archive:
archive.org/details/green-party-tempest The motivation of this clique is to hinder the implementation of any organizational methods, such as a dues-based membership system or other forms of recruitment/campaigning outside of a very limited "nonprofit culture" framework, because it could result in their ouster from power over the national and state parties. Stein has never hidden her alliance with this group, going so far as to hire David Cobb to her 2016 campaign. Counterpunch ran a pair of columns by its editors describing how low they were willing to sink in order to maintain power in the party: counterpunch.org/2017/07/21/red-state-blue-state-green-state-deep-state/ counterpunch.org/2017/07/13/on-caitlin-johnstone-and-david-cobbs-attempt-to-destroy-the-green-party/ In 2020, the party nominated Howie Hawkins, who has consistently advocated the aforementioned organizational methods such as dues. The Stein/Cobb clique have never been above any sort of dirty tricks. Rather than support the party's nominee, the RI Greens instead refused to support the ballot signature drive necessary to put Hawkins on the RI ballot. Their excuses were a combination of "lesser-evil" verbiage about how "Trump Must Go!" and the notion that the pandemic presented a biohazard that risked people's lives were they to attempt collecting signatures. I have no confirmation of this but suspect Stein approved of this effort for a simple reason: A failure by Hawkins would ensure Stein gained the 2024 nomination. x.com/RIGreens/status/1266073229640314881 In 2023, Cornel West announced his intentions to run for president as a Green. Later, he opted to cease his campaign for the Green nomination apnews.com/article/cornel-west-president-independent-green-party-2024-57dd7dbc0bccc10ea866005663398823 At the time of his departure from the Green nomination process, his campaign said “As Dr. West’s campaign for president grows, he believes the best way to challenge the entrenched system is by focusing 100% on the people, not on the intricacies of internal party dynamics." Though not explicitly stated, the prevalence of Stein's face in Green media alongside West suggests that, perhaps, he had locked horns with the Stein-Cobb clique, who might have been compelled to take a back seat once again in this campaign. Furthermore, in 2016, Stein played a most opportunist role after the election. She first tarried with Democratic talking points about Russian meddling in the election. Afterwards, she used the remaining resources from her campaign to finance lawsuits that litigated ballot integrity in states Clinton had lost to Trump. The late Bruce Dixon later explained this was contrary to his own suggestion, that Stein and her running mate Ajamu Baraka use these funds to finance a nationwide post-election tour that would further promote organizing efforts in state parties. As Ajamu has been a longtime advocate of the dues-based membership system, it is possible that Stein rejected this idea in the name of the aforementioned modus operandi of her larger clique. Stein instead subscribes to the rather barmy notion that the target demographic of Green outreach should be middle class liberal/progressive homeowners who still have material benefits to gain or lose from a Democratic victory in elected office. The Greens have squandered 25 years on this kind of infighting and have failed to accept they need to target the working poor, the marginalized minority voters, and other groups that have nothing to gain or lose regardless of who wins the election. It is an overall strategy devoid of logic or reason. They refuse to accept that, in the US political system, patronage, graft, and favors from elected officials is the way that you win votes. Greens have never built a machine like that. I will close with the point I made at the beginning about RI being so close to MA and CT. Never in the past 25 years have they put together a combined slate of candidates for US Senate or the House that uses the same unified platform. One can easily imagine the relative ease of getting three Greens in those three states to run for Senate using the same platform document, ESPECIALLY because these three states are solidly Democratic and so the "spoiler" accusation carries no validity in that instance. Instead, Greens run for various offices using whatever platform they want, which means you quite often have seen right wing Libertarians and John Tanton-style conservationists run as Greens (indeed, there was one such case in Colorado some years ago). This is not an argument to not vote for Stein, in the end finance capital is going to win the election. But likewise, the larger offering of third party leftist candidates offers the opportunity for the Greens to be challenged on legitimate anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist principles, including in terms of organizational methods. PSL is far from my favorite outfit on the block, their post-Marcyite neo-Stalinist apologetics are annoying and their doctrinaire maximalism is about as appealing to the general public as a brain tumor (though I have tremendous respect for their mobilizations this year around Palestine, something the Greens failed to match). Now we have the chance for multiple socialists to debate not only minutiae about Marx's labor theory of value, they can also debate the success or failure of each other's organizational tactics and methods. The Greens deserve to be debated by other socialist presidential candidates for their organizational methods and tactics, their history of political opportunism (remember when Ralph Nader and Pat Buchanan were coordinating with each other in 2000?), and other issues well outside the realm of nonsense spoiler arguments. This, I would argue, is something Proyect would have enjoyed. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. 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