The Politics of Coalition
Geltman, Emanuel & Plastrik, Stanley
With the two approaches presented in the article below, and the article by Tom Hayden which follows it, we open a discussion on the problem of coalition politics.— EDITORS I Virtually...
...Once the pangs of hunger are stilled, the appetite is not really dulled...
...Some liberals have been steadfast champions of liberty, others have scampered for safety when the going got rough—but the affliction of cowardice has been witnessed among red-hot militants too...
...But we are not there, and we have to see where we really are, and where radical politics can be...
...The decisive elements of radical coalition are already in that party, or near it...
...Within the party framework there are breakdowns of social interest and representation...
...Some Negroes are in CORE, NAACP, SNCC, SCLC, and so forth...
...No "element" has the right to sit in judgment on another except as each displays its devotion to democratic welfare in practice as well as program...
...In the article cited above, Bayard Rustin adds: It may be premature to predict a Southern Democratic party of Negroes and white moderates and a Republican party of refugee racists and economic conservatives, but there certainly is a strong tendency toward realignment and an additional 8.6 million Negroes of voting age in the eleven Southern states are still to be heard from . . . [And later.] We must see to it that the reorganization of the "consensus party" pro ceeds along lines which will make it an effective vehicle for social reconstruction...
...Coalition does not imply a suspension of the socialist function...
...They have mostly run their course quickly and disappeared back into the major parties...
...The civil rights protests have already seen the coalition in operation...
...Religious groups...
...On the American scene, it is by its very nature radical...
...In the chauvinism of radical argument, "liberal" can become a word of opprobrium...
...We have to stand with the "mass," to share and understand its present aspirations, if we are to refine its hopes...
...Truman had to beat the Dixiecrats...
...Some are more farseeing, better led, than others...
...Meanwhile we have to distinguish between what we have lost and what we have won, and that means learning to recognize what we have won, however small it is...
...We can chip away at this issue, or that...
...Much that is now commonplace in American life—social security, unemployment insurance, union protection—were once socialistic ideas, championed principally by socialists in coalition with (a point to remember) social reformers of another hue...
...V Are we suggesting that the matter ends here, with a new kind of coalition politics, embracing civil rights groups, labor, miscellaneous forces driven to social reform, and primarily expressing itself through the Democratic party...
...John L. Lewis, no mean bureaucrat himself, shook the union movement into new dimensions of struggle and organization, and eventually victory—impelled by workers who refused to be excluded from union organization or its benefits, and were ready to get rapped on the head, to sit-in, to challenge the mass-industry giants...
...Didn't it...
...only a new style of politics can appeal seriously to recently registered Negro voters and liberal young whites in the South who seek a platform that will finally bury the Civil War and regenerate the South...
...Iv Nothing is the same today as it was, let us say, twenty or thirty years ago...
...Hence, the evolution of these parties toward change is invariably accompanied by tremendous internal clashes such as we have been witnessing in the ranks of both national parties...
...Work in and through the party responsible for these acts...
...At moments when the issue has been sharply, if crudely, put, the response has revealed a sharp awareness of interest...
...In this, and allowing for differences in political sophistication, our experience has not been so far different from the European as some may think...
...This is precisely the point at which we—Socialists—can intervene to create a new sense of majority: a middle shifted to the left...
...As the elections shaped up, the issue became, or appeared to become pro- or anti-labor, and those who caught the spirit of that confrontation voted accordingly...
...2. Why...
...Congregations—many, perhaps most—have not gone along, but it is something when leading denominations select Negroes as Moderators, when nuns scorn abuse to walk proudly on the march, when churches are deeply involved in the civil rights issue not in the spirit of dispensing charity, but as participants in social action...
...To reach these millions, the people, requires political ruggedness, the intelligence of responsibility, and a strong commitment to democratic achievement...
...We cannot turn our backs on society, or its components, and hope to revolutionize that society...
...The penalty is frequently "standpattism" and immobility in the major parties...
...The one unforgivable crime is to enjoy futility...
...None of us has an option on sincerity...
...If you wish to be profound you can say the 1948 election distorted this issue, but unless you wish to be silly you must acknowledge that it also reflected the issue...
...The people— the ones we have to convince, or we are nothing—remained massively indifferent...
...By the same evidence, "students" are not in themselves a movement, and most students haven't the remotest interest in self-sacrificing social struggle...
...Since then, for American Socialists, it has been mostly decline...
...For a while the idea of a labor party captivated socialists...
...nor does it preclude the necessity to stand against as well as with, where there is no moral alternative...
...seek social change, the Democratic party is already the major political arena and vehicle...
...Its parts pursue their separate aims, as the various parts of the civil rights movement operate independently, and sometimes differently, yet all to the same end...
...Parks sat down, the whole world stood up," says the song...
...We can move ahead with this sit-down or that march...
...The very quality of democratic association implies argument, even vehement argument...
...We may, as socialists, see beyond the welfare state, but toward that end we do share with unlettered sharecropper or troubled academic a stake in extending the limits of welfarism...
...And so we "assent" to extensions of democratic system and procedure...
...It is not quite that easy to rub against the realitites of American politics, to educate people, convince them, move them...
...No one will, or should, take us seriously if, in pursuing the ends of social and economic justice, we ignore the allies and issues which lift us toward that goal...
...This is not to say that they have not been willing on occasion to respond to invention...
...Where the coalition disagrees, its components go their separate ways —but at least there is the occasion for dialogue, the precious opportunity to convince each other...
...These are not fixed or equivalent bodies, but categories of support into which we can reach...
...The dispossessed have only small goals...
...What is the Negro to strive for—if not to live better, to enjoy the fruits as well as the dignity of equality...
...We are not suggesting that we commit ourselves in any principled or irrevocable way to the Democratic party...
...But given the Congressional disquiet on Vietnam, it would be equally foolish to deny that protest within the Democratic party can be significant...
...In the end we can be as irrelevant in militancy as in complacency...
...Their operational mode has been political rather than principled, in terms of the issues of the day (broadly viewed) or of power in its crass and self-serving aspects (narrowly viewed...
...It is simply a matter of where the forces are and are likely to remain...
...The pseudoradical notion that everyone is adjusted, that everyone but the poorest of the poor can be bought, is self-defeating, repugnant to any conception of social change...
...These issues affect the lives of millions of human beings: It matters a great deal whether an auto worker gets a better pension, and it even matters a little whether he gets our support...
...Rustin here names: Negroes, trade unionists, liberals, and religious groups...
...The question, then, is not whether you or we join that party, but whether we recognize it as an instrument through use of which social welfare can be extended...
...Acts of generosity and acts of cruelty are common in our history...
...The radical and the liberal tradition have always had many areas of contact in extending the realms of liberty—as in the enactment of civil rights legislation...
...This coalition is not a "united front" except as it meets in a given action or conference...
...But if disaffection can express itself in protest, in shaking up the body politic, in dislocating the machinery of social repression, the challenge remains of turning that impulse to purposeful direction...
...It is up to us to make the connection clear...
...Suppose we restate that to clarify what we mean by coalition politics: In order to move our society forward, today in the 1960s (not the 70s or 80s which may present other problems or opportunities), we envisage a coalition of social forces and movements whose ideas and interests have a common purpose, and which will express itself through the political instrument that is most accessible and effective...
...Asked why he robbed banks, Willie Sutton is supposed to have answered, "Because that's where the money is...
...it seemed so obvious a solution to the problem of "American backwardness...
...The future of the Negro struggle depends on whether the contradictions of this society can be resolved by a coalition of progressive forces which becomes the effective political majority in the United States...
...What better way to bridge the gap between the economic militancy and political innocence of the American working class...
...It is downright silly to maintain that nothing has been achieved...
...Or Mrs...
...It is not the same as yielding to their prejudices, or shortsightedness...
...To a great extent they have belonged to one or another party because their fathers and fathers' fathers belonged, or because it is the regional thing to do...
...The tally-sheet is scored by issues met and understood, crises elevated to achievement, progress measured in escalating goals...
...We are, in effect, speaking of two things...
...Reflecting basic aspirations of the working class without whom (whether in the socialist canon or any other) society cannot operate, they are the natural allies of the civil rights movement on the simplest level of desire...
...otherwise all bets are really off...
...On the record, that is often a piece of arrogance...
...For some of these the radical function too often stops at a criticism of all that is tasteless and shoddy in a society of meager values...
...We can neither prescribe nor blueprint the "how" and "when" of coalition...
...Because of disgust with the rottenness that exists in such abundance, some peculiar attitudes have developed among us...
...And an obligation to try to do something now...
...and we try to extend its force into all aspects of domestic life...
...Of course, this revolution in the attitude of the churches is primarily a response to the Negro revolution, and to such other searing events as the extermination of the Jews under Hitler...
...All of them face anxieties and frictions of which they have not yet begun to take full measure—the millions of unorganized, the fear of automation, the absence of democracy, the pressure from Negroes to full admission into all, not only some, unions...
...Easy or not, it is possible to accomplish these ends if we use the resources that are available to us in coalition with others of (more or less) similar purpose and mind...
...So it had better be said bluntly: There is no disgrace attached to a worker wanting to live better, wanting to be "fat," and no advan tage in pseudo-asceticsm...
...The other, the coalition we advocate, is a vague but inspired, coming-together of movements and motivations which here act in concert, there severally press for different measures and conceptions of social betterment...
...Martin Luther King (in his speech to the Illinois AFL-CIO Convention) is right to "call upon labor as the historic ally of the underprivileged to join with us in this present struggle to redeem the soul of America...
...I speak of the coalition which staged the March on Washington, passed the Civil Rights Act, and laid the basis for the Johnson landslide—Negroes, trade unionists, liberals, and religious groups...
...No matter how many the adherents to Islam, the fact remains that the Negro masses want to be part of and to improve this society—to work in the factory beside the white worker and on the same terms, to be in the schools, churches, unions, neighborhoods, and political insti tutions...
...Dissent is a function of conscience in any society...
...But large numbers have demonstrated a radical concern with social issues, and have in fact given of themselves heroically to the civil rights movement...
...Few Americans participate actively in the affairs of their party, except in elections—and no small matter that...
...Nor is it a formal pact that will be announced on a certain day...
...The shared ingredient is a willingness to speak up and act for democratic institutions and procedures...
...Individuals can opt out, but the choice is not likely to win many recruits...
...TVA may have been accomplished in cooperation with the racist one-party structure of the South, yet this in no way diminishes the necessity to protect it from the assaults of private utility interests...
...To do so automatically antagonizes and repels the "middle group" which normally holds the balance of power...
...There is no socialism without compassion for the socially injured and deprived...
...Organizationally articulated or not, increasing members have demonstrated their willingness to undertake any challenge, however severe...
...With the two approaches presented in the article below, and the article by Tom Hayden which follows it, we open a discussion on the problem of coalition politics.— EDITORS I Virtually all parties, except the most narrowly doctrinaire or authoritarian, are coalitions of a sort...
...There are bound to be major disagreements on foreign policy, and these should be debated openly and vigorously, without impeding the effectiveness of coalition, let us say, in pressing full citizenship for the Negro, or proposing anti-poverty measures...
...1I...
...And labor is right to call upon all of us, precisely in the interest of • Since this article was written, the American Federation of Teachers, a remarkable organization in many ways, has announced through its president, Charles Cogen, that the union has appointed a full-time coordinator to expand its participation in the Freedom Schools program which last summer set up schools for over 4000 Negro pupils in the South...
...There is at hand a ready reservoir of radical response...
...3. What...
...the underprivileged, to enlist in the campaign to press Congress for repeal of Taft-Hartley's 14-B...
...And what purpose is served...
...So we "assent" to the Civil Rights Act while continuing to dissent from its limitations and the realities of segregation...
...But our welfare state is still at a primitive level in comparison with European standards in some respects, such as family subsidies, and we have only scratched the surface by the standards of need and opportunity...
...Speaking of the civil rights movement, Bayard Rustin wrote (Commentary, February 1965): Neither that movement nor the country's twenty million black people can win political power alone...
...Thus we submit that in the South today, and in the very nature of things, a mass infusion of the Democratic party by the Negro people, breaching the walls of segregation, would be a "fresh kind of political association," and is, in fact, a "bold approach," III In terms of traditional coalition politics, majority rule in so diverse a nation as ours is bound to be moderate in nature...
...In the same sense, we hold that the main arena in which a radical coalition can work politically is the Democratic party...
...this causes great disturbances, and a new balance must be found—either further to the left or the right...
...But increasingly it becomes evident that we need to consider many issues and activities...
...it is refined...
...Whether Catholic, Protestant, or Jewish, the change in the churches of the United States has been remarkable...
...In moments of stress, labor leaders (including some of consequence) went so far as to give comfort to the idea...
...Yet the idea never got off the ground, and not because the leaders weren't as good as their word...
...Whether in the language of "mass base" or of "constituency," this is where effectiveness and responsibility lie...
...We need allies...
...Whether in criticism or analysis, in our periodicals or our forums, we start with the premise of socialist conviction...
...In a sense, third party movements are as deeply ingrained in the American evolution as the two-party system...
...The point is that democratic remedies exist, and it is our history...
...We cannot afford to give the impression that we are dedicated to nonachievement in any respect...
...It is as though goaded by frustration, and despairing before the immensity of the task, some of us have come to revel in the passion of misery...
...the great majority are in no organization, and are leaderless...
...In any case, there is no evidence that efforts in the near future to create new parties on a national scale can lead to anything but a splinter...
...In Europe the broad coalitions have developed inside parties which operate within a general ideological, very much a class, alignment for which we have never found, except in pale and ineffective imitation, a corresponding political frame—a Labor party, a Socialist party...
...It contains, however, a corollary obligation to Iocate areas of "assent" in the movements of persons and politics...
...That's where the people are— those most likely to respond to the influences of radical coalition...
...Legislation has to be implemented by enforcement and education...
...they are not just a shadow-play of manipulation or mass society...
...There is at least one requirement that is elementary and self-evident: if some actions and campaigns are necessarily left to the arrangement of leaderships, the basic political force of coalition action cannot make itself felt without mass support...
...But that alone is not decisive...
...The unions are, obviously, not a law unto themselves, and never were...
...As armies march best on full bellies, so progress encourages new horizons...
...Majority rule reflects subtle shifts of power in empirical response to democratic pressures...
...It is true that in the puffy, bureaucratized, un imaginative unions it may be hard to recognize the powerful, progressive forces they have been and often still are...
...We believe vast numbers of human beings can be moved...
...But a socialist who fails to recognize that he holds no proprietary right on compassion is no more than an impediment...
...we dare not suppose that discussion can be suspended...
...This is coalition, inspiring and useful, in action...
...This basic connection exists even if, here and there, because of prejudice or tight circumstances, clashes have appeared...
...If the President contradicts democratic posture with military adventure, it is up to us to advance the politically radical and democratic means of opposing Communism...
...Parks...
...The civil rights organizations can open opportunity, but beyond that point the unorganized in the plant cannot do without the solidarity of union organization...
...On a national scale, and generally through the two-party system, the elections have by and large reflected the degree of popular involvement or general indifference...
...Under other conditions all this might be very tepid...
...In this, as in so many ways, the civil rights movement is serving to put us on the right track, particularly as it turns toward political action and a broadening of its demands...
...The BIack Muslims reflect the despair of the Negro, the hatreds and cruelties of a white society...
...Socialism is not merely an exercise in discontent...
...The balancing middle is being displaced...
...But paradoxes are no less common in democracies than in other systems, perhaps more common in the nature of things...
...A coalition animated by radical impulses and wishing to express itself forcefully will probably do so, in the main, through the Democratic party...
...It is a relationship of forces, and in insufficient ways, it is already here...
...If we were in a "revolutionary" situation with a tremendous upsurge for the democratic reconstruction of society along socialist lines, we might be far past this point...
...A new style of politics" is certainly the order of the day...
...There have even been local socialist victories, and for a glorious moment when Eugene Victor Debs touched the hearts and minds of the people, a million of them voted Socialist in a national election...
...We believe that the issues being fought out within the welfare state are real, even if distorted and insufficient...
...Democracy is finally not compatible with social advances at home and abuses abroad...
...We are not offering the preposterous proposition that the Democratic party can be converted into a socialist party by some alchemy of penetration and guile...
...A socialist who does not feel it in his guts, whose commitment is entirely cerebral, is less than nothing...
...What is decisive is that we possess the freedoms of protest and opposition...
...What other machinery exists, or can be devised, to protect this worker on his job, to help him achieve decent pay and conditions...
...The "consensus" party has, at least, been frayed on the issue...
...Special and local conditions may create special institutions and local alignments of a different kind.* But, in general, for those who • Thus, in New York's recent mayoralty campaign a good case might havebeen made for supporting Republican John Lindsay—but that was outside the stream of basic political trends or significance...
...Well or poorly, the socio-economic relations and conflicts of the society do get reflected in the party structures...
...It was not crucial, at that moment, that Truman was a no less fervent advocate of capitalism than Dewey, that he had shamefully dropped the bomb, that in another context he was prepared to employ federal controls to undermine a strike...
...Those of us who are socialists can debate ultimate ends with the liberal, but we have a present need to make common cause on a great variety of urgent political issues...
...However, in our milieu, in the context of our beliefs, it is a different approach, and we will not be able to scale its possibilities or its limits except as we have the experience of participation...
...Where ignorance, narrowness of vision, and cupidity thwart progress, they must be educated to yield—and allies for that contest will be found within this very same union movement.* The point has central significance today as Negroes, for example, seek jobs, better jobs, and protection on the job...
...When Mrs...
...We could add socialists, students, radicals, young and old...
...Charles D. Bolton, The Nation, May 25, 1964...
...Our object is to turn that same coalition of forces toward broader political objectives...
...It cannot be held together by resolution or formal regulation...
...It would be foolish to say that protest should be confined to the Democratic party: there are times when it is necessary to take to the streets...
...And there is something noble about going down to defeat in an honest effort to win...
...These commonplace and still grievously inadequate measures encountered every bit as much opposition as any radical measure proposed today...
...Who will tell that to an auto worker who remembers the Ford plant thirty years ago...
...it represents in the turbulence of our national life a vehicle somewhat responsive to "extremist" pressures...
...But it is a marvelous response nevertheless...
...By no means...
...The content of coalition ultimately rests on our ability to win support for our ideas and respect for our seriousness by working alongside the people we hope to influence in factory, hospital, school, or club...
...They have presumed to speak for all interests, and in fact have spoken essentially for the dominant social interest—tacking here and there to accommodate this pressure or submit to that need...
...No majority party can base itself upon the programs of an extremist group that may exist in the party's ranks...
...There is nothing to be ashamed of in the socialist influence, a great deal to be proud of...
...Frustrations are easily explained and justified...
...There are restive thousands, tens of thousands, who are preoccupied with social dislocation...
...It works, it exists intermittently, as in the March on Washington...
...The American people have, for the most part, repudiated splintery political investments...
...There will be all manner of disagreements, and a good thing too...
...And the New Frontier and the Great Society have had to sponsor legislative blows at racism...
...But it was also hard to recognize the socially explosive materials that surrounded the indolent, narrow-visioned and smug if troubled, craft unions of Samuel Gompers and William Green...
...The unions—as social institutions, not as a given local or international— remain essential units of social advance...
...Inadequate as much of the legislation has come to seem, the very perception of its inadequacy rests upon the advances which it embodies...
...Surely the happiest—and easiest—solution for the radical condition is to think we can agitate the disaffected into our welcoming organizational arms—if only they would come...
...No one misread the object of Truman's 1948 "Give 'em hell" campaign which confounded the pollsters and the political wise guys...
...And we had best be there too—for this is where the radical potential in coalition resides...
...In the context of present-day social relations that coalition has been radical in effect...
...Can we depend on these groups, these individuals of good intent, these "elements...
...The conception itself is not particularly novel...
...It rather intensifies its opportunities...
...Like it or not, the American people have turned their backs on experiments outside these familiar party structures which appear to them to have served democracy well...
...It is an affirmation of what is possible to man unfettered by economic or political repression...
...Liberal and radical pressures have achieved a modest level of welfarism in this country...
...Beyond these lie the millions who can be drawn into expressing their commitment to social progress...
...Liberals...
...Movements are not really built on failure...
...These can be embraced in greatest effectiveness only by bringing them together in political force...
...One is a party, and it exists...
...However, there are millions who do not see beyond the "American way of life," and who can yet be attracted to a vision of a society that is good (not "Great"), a society that breathes freely for being open and vigorous...
...So we "assent" to the new social vigor of the churches...
...Unquestionably more sophisticated politically, the Europeans have been no less motivated pragmatically...
...Nevertheless, it would be idiocy to assume that if worker and boss choose to believe they have an equal stake in American society, they are indifferent to how their respective needs are served...
...millions of Americans have been testing its utility right along...
...We do offer the proposition that a radical political coalition can exist within the Democratic party, and influence it toward advancing the national interest in social reconstruction...
...Some groups exist—a union, a Negro or liberal organization, a student body—and they can be brought together in formal consideration of issues and actions...
...What it comes down to is if the government (yes, the Democratic party) sees the conflict with Communism principally in military terms, it is up to us to offer political alternatives and sane peace-making policies...
...They have clung to and revived, where they had suffered extermination by war and fascism, the mass organizations which offer the security of promising effectiveness...
...Trade unionists...
...Whether Bull Moose or Farmer-Labor, these movements, however, have never survived the moment of creation or local (state, city) peculiarity...
...1. Who...
...Educated women with no meaningful role in contemporary society, elderly people stripped of their identity by social as well as occupational retirement, communities threatened by capricious shifts in defense spending, young people tired of privatism as a response to the hypocrisy and insensitivity of contemporary public life—all these could be appealed to by a new politics based upon a fresh kind of political association...
...Here is the root of common cause between black and white worker, between unorganized and unionized, between social do-gooder and social revolutionary...
...But the content of that new style can be given a wide range of meaning from isolated, if brave, sorties to turbulent intervention in American political life as it is lived...
...As this is written, we are witnessing the monstrous intervention in Santo Domingo and the terror of escalated war in Vietnam...
...Decline as a movement, not at all as an "influence...
...Where most European parties have had a declared ideological underpinning, the coalitions represented in the major American parties have been ideologically diffuse...
...The New Deal, certainly in its later stages, initiated reforms in the South, as in other areas of the country, without damaging its racist structure except in the very general way that economic advance erodes the foundations of racism...
...It is easy enough to simulate energy and activity...
...In the discontent of young people, above all in the sweeping impact of the civil rights movement, are resources of radical change...
Vol. 13 • January 1966 • No. 1
