On Complexity and Coalitions: Responds

...We need both party formations and issuespecific movements, in my opinion, to strengthen the left in this country...

...Thus, I completely agree with Gitlin that broad-based cooperation among all with reason to oppose corporate power and increasing inequality is the order of the day...

...Abortion, for example, is not an "identity" issue...

...We must try to forge a movement that brings together many different kinds of people with different social situations into a working people's movement...

...The point is to get to work building new organizations and coalitions...

...94 • DISSENT...

...Anyone who is not rich is a worker according to this slogan: the small farmer, the police officer, the woman who cares for children at home, the high-paid college professor, the retired steel worker, the hotel maid, the bookstore owner, the man arrested for petty larceny who has had few jobs in ten years...

...In the February 1997 issue of the Progressive, Adolph Reed proposes another true but vacuous slogan—"We are all workers"—as an alternative to the "identity politics" he derides...

...We will be successful in doing that, however, only if we develop more means for people to explain to one another the specificity of their lives and commitments, and to build together a connected analysis of how structural changes in capitalism are hurting all of us and how we might reverse those harms...

...It is simply false to suggest that these structures are only about "culture" and "identity," as opposed to the real material issues of class...

...As soon as we get specific, the differences and potential conflicts among working people surface, and it is obvious that these differences are conditioned, among other things, by structures of gender, race and age...

...We risk further fraying the thin threads of trust if we blame each other for such decline in mass movement and organizational capacity...

...To my delight, however, on most other issues we seem to agree: that the achievements of group-specific movements are many and overdue, that multiculturalism is politically important for reasons of equity, that movements should avoid being hostage to leaders, and that opposing issues of recognition to issues of economic and health equality sets up a false dichotomy...

...In both cases organizational capacity had to be built after the issues hit the national public agenda, where they moved very quickly...

...If he is right, and I believe he is, then isn't it time for certain left writers and activists to stop opposing the purity of class to the degradations of gender, race, and sexuality...

...Appeal to the "general welfare" is vacuous, however, unless all the specific constituencies that ought to be included in a progressive coalition define what it means through dialogue...

...So in the article in the Winter issue to which Gitlin refers, Zelda Bronstein proposes that "Promote the general welfare" should replace "Sisterhood is powerful...

...I think the problem has less to do with ideas and rhetoric than with organization...

...Those who attack so-called identity politics suggest instead that the way to build inclusive coalitions is to ask everyone to put aside their specificity and mouth deceptively simple slogans...

...it is an issue that concerns the most basic material options for many women...

...As I noted in my essay, developments in the Labor party, New party, and Independent Progressive Politics Network, among others, are encouraging...

...We also agree that political good will is worth little if it does not accomplish change...

...Gitlin finds Bronstein's account an exemplar of "identity politics" obstructing achievement of the common good...

...As Bronstein admits, however, it appears at least as much to be the story of an arrogant group of "key people" who attempt to SPRING • 1997 • 93 Arguments set the common agenda for a diverse movement and then expect constituencies to sign on...

...As I perceive our current situation, all kinds of issue-specific mass organizing has waned in the last decade—issue-specific feminist, gay and lesbian, African-American, and Chicano organizing as much as community organizing around issues of peace, environment, affordable housing, and employment...

...I must continue to insist, however, that to make such organizing inclusive requires attending to the group-specific differences in structural position and experience of all working and poor people...

...Clearly, not enough energy on the left in recent years has gone to promoting visions and projects that might bring together a majority...

...The progressive public responses to the health care debate and welfare repeal were weak partly because there was little organization in place that could begin mobilizing people...

...These are all electorally oriented formations, however...

...Gitlin says that class versus group difference is a false dichotomy...