A Third Party in the Making

Each election year it becomes increasingly difficult for union officials to rally the rank-and-file to the polls on election day. In 1984, nearly 76 million eligible U.S. voters stayed home - 21 million more than voted for Reagan. Union leaders blamed the apathetic rank and file. "They just don't care anymore.. .They're too well off," was the refrain.

But there is another explanation. The membership may be trying to tell its leadership something. Maybe they are staying home on election day because they see that despite campaign promises made in union halls it makes little difference who gets elected. Maybe they see that both parties are pro-corporate entities and neither looks out for their interests. And just maybe the rank-and-file union members are right.

The Democratic Party is without question moving to the right. Its leaders have long since concluded that the party must decidedly not be a working-class institution. As former Virginia Gov. Charles Robb, a Democratic hopeful for the 1988 presidential election, put it, the Democratic Party must "also be a party of business leaders, doctors, pharmacists, stockbrokers and other professionals." The irony of this desire to cater to business elites is that it may actually diminish party support. As Joel Rodgers and Thomas Ferguson show in their excellent study, Right Turn, the majority of the public still believes that business must be strictly regulated not unleashed; that social programs need to be expanded, not slashed; and that more public spending for jobs and environmental protection is needed, not less. Nevertheless, the Democratic Party is making a bid to recapture the support of the business elite and, of course, corporate PAC contributors.

The liberal Democrats on the other hand, have only somewhat half heartedly put the working class on their agenda. Sen. Paul Simon, D-Ill. says he has the answer. Simon is calling for a Guaranteed Job Opportunity Program to provide work for the millions of unemployed, underemployed, dislocated and discouraged workers. The jobs would be geared toward helping cities and states improve the quality of the country's infrastructure, repair parks, roads, fight illiteracy and provide day care. The workers would even get health insurance coverage. But Simon believes that these workers should earn no more than $107.20 per week - 32 hours of work at the minimum wage. He argues for this insulting pay level and shortened work week because he is fearful of what private sector business elites will say. Sen. Simon feels he is being even-handed. "Paying them below the minimum wage will not give people the wage lift they need," Simon argued. While paying them above the minimum wage "will not encourage them enough to get off the government payroll. This proposal strikes a sensible balance," Simon said.

But this proposal strikes out with most workers. It strikes at the wages of public sector workers who already perform similar tasks at union wages. It strikes at the very worth of public sector work. It implies that those who work to build and clean our cities and who provide day care and remedial education should be paid poverty wages. The urgency of rallying round the Democratic Party of either Robb or Sen. Simon is lost on most workers.

Although it is a grave mistake to blame any one party official or leader for this rightward drift of the Democratic Party, the fact of the matter is that for too long the party has too closely mirrored its rival, the GOP. By squinting just a little it is clear that the United States is a one party society. Certainly there are differences in emphasis but when it comes to the business of bottom lines, both parties are one. Both have agreed on the fundamentals - unleash the private sector, cut regulations, promote corporate profits, privatize public services and do as little as possible to promote social spending and decent paying jobs.

An Inside Job

The United States needs a second party, not a third party. It needs a party that puts people before profits and speaks to the needs and aspirations of working people.

There are only two ways to get it. Either workers must recapture the Democratic Party, or form a new one.

The idea of recapturing the Democratic Party starts from a very shaky premise of believing it was ever the domain of progressive forces in the first place. It has never been a party of working people. Again as Rodgers and Ferguson show, the Democratic Party has been dominated by its main investors. Since the New Deal, its main investors have represented multinational, capital-intensive corporations and banking houses, not labor, women, blacks, and Hispanics. The question is then one of capturing not of recapturing.

It is much more likely that labor will be moved to the center of the party structure rather than moving the party to the left. Rarely is it possible to reform large institutions from within when the rules of the game are written by those in control. The rule in party politics is that in the end you have to support the procorporate candidates and platform even if that deadly combination drives another million workers into the mass of non-voters.

This is the quagmire that Rev. Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition has been forced to face. The Coalition has attracted many excellent activists from unions and community groups and has articulated many pro-worker positions, but by running in the Democratic primaries, they have committed themselves to playing by the centrist party rules which pledge them to support the eventual nominee. Since it is certain that the eventual winner will be a procorporate candidate (be it Hart, Cuomo, Nunn or Gephardt) the Rainbow Coalition will again face a critical dilemma. If the coalition stays in the party, it runs the risk of alienating its rankand-file activists or worse, its mass supporters. If it stays true to its principles, it will be forced to drop out of the Democratic Party structure.

A Party Without Candidates

But there has never been a better time to discard those rules and break from the one party state in order to build a labor party. Not since the great depression have U.S. workers been so alienated from Corporate America. With the real joblessness rate hovering around 14 percent, there is a growing perception now that the corporate giants of our economy cannot and will not provide enough decent paying stable jobs. More and more workers now believe that they and perhaps their children will be downwardly mobile. They sense the growing polarization between the have and have nots and the growing size of the latter. The hope that somehow business and labor can all grow together is gone. They see business booming at the expense of labor. They sense what many union leaders fear to acknowledge - that the established political process has been thoroughly captured by corporate elites.

If labor leaders fail to acknowledge the reality that their rank and file already perceive, they do them a great disservice. This is the time to be bold and to be blunt. An anticorporate, pro-worker platform is needed, and the way to build a new vision is by building an alternative political party for working people now - a labor party that is independent of the Democratic Party. A labor party that puts forth a new hard hitting agenda for working people, and for the unemployed and dispossessed. Such a party, free from corporate compromise, would be accepted by both organized and unorganized workers. Several unions have already called for its formation, and many groups of workers believe it is the only desirable alternative. But to form a new party will be a difficult task.

In the first place, it will be a long and arduous process. The task of organizing a new party must be undertaken with the same kind of care and foresight that it would take to organize the largest multinational corporation. It cannot be done overnight, and it cannot be done without deep commitment. Therefore, the actual operation of a labor party, complete with candidates at all levels, is many years away.

Second, a labor party should not attempt to run candidates - even at the local level - from the outset. Such an effort would tug on the loyalties of those who are trying to reform the Democratic Party or build coalitions. Instead, the effort must start by being a party without candidates.

Although parties are usually identified with the process of running candidates, for this new party to successfully challenge the Democratic and Republican parties, it must first and foremost be dedicated to developing an alternative vision and alternative proposals for workers. The formation would depend on local representatives from the union movement who are dissatisfied with the corporate assault on the lives of workers. Their job would be to hammer out a new direction for working people and educate and recruit workers. Like the British Labor Party, it would also encourage unorganized constituencies - unemployed and unorganized workers - to participate.

Before it can begin to run candidates in local, state and national elections, the party leaders must first reframe the national debate on a broad spectrum of issues. Labor must learn from the success of the Right in America. The power of the conservative forces lies in their ability to establish the cadence of the public debate through adroit use of think-tanks and the media. They have helped create a situation where both parties now debate how best to unleash Corporate America rather than how to control Corporate America.

A labor party, even without candidates, could begin to put issues affecting workers back on the agenda, becoming the only organized force in society devoted to developing ideas to help working people first. Such a party needs to grow on the basis of its ideas rather than on trying to elect personalities. Once it achieves a sufficient membership then it can begin to selectively run candidates.

Labor leaders are quick to note that third parties have not worked in this country. Few third parties, it is argued, have survived for long, and fewer still have elected candidates. But critics ignore the impact third parties have had on the terms of the debate. Third parties created both the ideas and the demand for most of what we call the New Deal. Social Security, collective bargaining rights, minimum wage, welfare and health insurance were the "wildeyed" demands of small, left, third-party efforts. In the 1960s, George Wallace and his third party stressing law and order racism shifted the debate in the other direction.

Rank-and-file activists have another set of concerns. They worry that a labor party will quickly be dominated by labor bureaucrats who will in turn run it into the ground just as they've done to the labor movement as a whole. But this concern is misplaced. It is unlikely that labor bureaucrats would break with the current two-party system. Many high-level union officials are heavily dependent on the Democratic Party. Rather than fight Corporate America, the labor establishment sees the Democratic Party as its line to the power structure. They would certainly view the creation of a new political vehicle as a threat to their power and as a vehicle for rank-and-file dissent. They will try to crush it rather than work with it. This is one reason why no national union president has committed resources to organizing a labor party even though several have called for such a party.

No, a labor party will not be organized from the top down. If it happens at all, it will have to be organized at the grassroots level. And whatever is built must be based on the principles of participatory democracy.

Broadening the Base

Community activists have a different worry about a labor party. They argue that since most people are unorganized, organized labor is too small a base to start from and it would make more sense to build a broader political coalition. Although they raise a valid question, it would be a strategic mistake for workers to begin by building coalitions. Organized labor represents over 15 million workers who belong to structured institutions that meet and participate in local, regional and national labor bodies. The organizing opportunities provided by these structures cannot be dismissed.

Second, any serious new party must have sufficient resources to send a large cadre of organizers into the field. The money for such a venture certainly won't come from the national unions. The local unions therefore must be the financial backbone of such a party. To gain such support workers must identify directly with the goals of the new party. Unfortunately, coalitions tend to weaken that identification. Coalitions often seek broad common - at times the lowest common - denominators to keep the group together. Too often coalition efforts alienate rank-and-file workers who feel that the coalition is really not oriented to workers. Local unions and their members must band together and establish their own agenda before coalition efforts can work.

Serious social change may be accelerated if a variety of groups develop independent political vehicles. It would help, not hurt, to see a proliferation of parties including a "Green Party" for environmentalists. Clear and focused agendas will benefit the parties and participants.

The concept of a labor party runs counter to many current assumptions about politics. Too many people have given up on labor. Too many are looking to coalitions for answers. But it is a grave mistake for labor leaders to turn away from their rank-and-file union membership. Labor has the potential to again become a leading group in the fight for social change. There are local union leaders and rank-and-file workers throughout the country who for the first time since the 1930s believe that the system does not work and needs a drastic overhaul. The time is ripe to organize that potential before the growing rightwing populism based on racial and ethnic hatred can fan the flames of fear.

Tony Mazzocchi and Les Leopold are members of the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers Union, Local 8-149 and work at the Labor Institute in New York.