The Inside-Outside Strategy

One of the persistent failings of what passes for "Left" organization in this country is that it has no inside-outside strategy. When the Democrats finally tell the "Left" that it has nowhere else to go, and asks said "Left" the magic question: what are you going to do about it, vote for Republicans? -- that is where said "Left" will appear not to have prepped any answer at all, and quite on purpose.

It is in such a light that we should consider the plight of Our Revolution Los Angeles. Having been disowned by the national organization, Our Revolution Los Angeles has now issued this Tweet: "After much deliberation, we have unfortunately decided to part ways with MPP..." I really don't know what the gossip is behind ORLA's decision to part ways with MPP, and would appreciate being filled in. Readers should, though, remember that Our Revolution Los Angeles was the organization which got the ball rolling with the Movement for a People's Party.

Reading this has caused me to revisit my support for a Movement for a People's Party. I supported the Movement for a People's Party, and I did so not really caring a whole lot about what it stood for. I did, however, insist that it not be just another party of neoliberal social climbers, which is in fact what the Democratic Party and Republican Party elites are. The point of the Movement for a People's Party was that it would give the "Left" in this country a solid answer to the question: "so what are you going to do about it, vote for Republicans?" -- the answer being "we're going to vote for People's Party candidates." Of course, to be able to voice that answer in any convincing way, there needs to be a People's Party. The point of a People's Party, for me at least, was not to replace the Democrats, nor some simple goal of "victory" the naysayers were always parroting was "unattainable," but rather to give ordinary voters an alternative to having to vote for them, however reluctantly, when push came to shove. (The Green Party can be considered as having seriously retreated from that role back in 2004, for reasons related in this article.) The idea was, then, that the People's Party was to fit into what we should call the inside-outside strategy. We work both inside and outside the Democratic Party, and between the two efforts we will win.

I am arguing this: We should, then, support both Democrats who take our wishes to survive seriously, and alternative parties when the Democrats don't take our wishes to survive seriously. What the People's Party actually stands for, in that regard, is something that should be decided democratically, so as to give everyone a feeling of participating in decisionmaking. (My guess is that what would win would look more or less like what they've proclaimed so far, which is the Bernie Sanders agenda.) But it's not the most important thing.

At this point I want to ask the membership of Our Revolution Los Angeles: "okay, so what's next?" For now, it appears, most of America is going to sit back and trust in the Democratic Party to "do the right thing," regardless of its rather inadequate history in that regard, simply because the alternative is to trust in a Republican Party currently in thrall to the Trump cult. That's an inadequate strategy. But, hey, if people (I will not name names) want to barge onto my Facebook profile and call the Movement for a People's Party "Jimmy Dore's grift," then maybe I want to think of them as twits, while wondering at the same time if the Movement for a People's Party really does have its act together.

Dual Power

Now, if you trust Wikipedia, "dual power" was originally a concept of Lenin, to describe the situation in Russia after the February Revolution of 1918, in which two opposing systems of governance existed side-by-side in Russia, competing for power. But, no, one doesn't have to be a Leninist to believe in any sort of dual power system. At the bottom of the Wikipedia article, you can see, there is a discussion of "use by libertarian socialists." The basic idea is as follows: don't like the government? Start your own. It's the notion put into practice by a faction of the Kurds, the Zapatistas, and to some extent Occupy. ROAR Magazine has put together a "dual power reading list" which you should all read.

Perhaps the most interesting of these libertarian socialists is Murray Bookchin. Here's a good summary:

Dual power refers to a bifurcation of political authority between the democratic and self-directed institutions of the broad working class and the governing institutions of capitalist society, leading to a struggle for popular legitimacy. This challenge will arise directly from the power of popular organizations as alternative governing institutions which can supplant the present system. In Bookchin’s conception of dual power, its primary institutional form is decision-making by popular assemblies. These assemblies are intended to form vast federations and federations of federations, so as to hollow out and overthrow the capitalist state.

I think Extinction Rebellion had something like this in mind. You can see, at any rate, how politics would be improved by a dual power strategy -- it would take a lot of voluntary effort to create popular assemblies, whereas surrender to the will of the all-powerful Two-Party System of Neoliberal Social Climbers via the universal voting apparatus is easy and supported in full-throat fashion by the mass media. I wonder what would make it a less distant fantasy for my community? I'm sure there will be no end of disasters, "natural" and otherwise, coming down the pipeline, ascribed to the usual causes (capitalism, climate change) which will make a dual power arrangement look really good in the future.