Fusion: The Liberal Snare

THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY IS A CESSPOOL, FUNDED, AND FUNDED MUNIFICENTLY, by huge, global corporations which count on its politicians to discipline, and divide, the workforce. Realignment, the effort to transform the Democrats from within, has proved a total failure. Clinton and his coterie, with their brazen corruption and cynical opportunism, have furnished us with compelling proof of this failure. For two decades and more, the Democratic Party has moved inexorably to the right, destroying the illusion that either of the two corporate parties can become an effective vehicle for social change. As a result, a considerable segment of the left has begun to espouse a position that leaves it on the periphery of the Democratic Party, half in and half out. Proponents of this position intend to support only progressive Democrats, while distancing themselves from mainstream machine politicians of the Clinton-Gore ilk. This strategy encompasses several tactical variations, of which fusion is the most prominent. With fusion, a political party that has gained ballot status endorses selected candidates of another party, thus providing those candidates with an additional line on the ballot. While fusion could conceivably occur when two third parties support the same nominee, the term has come to mean an electoral strategy designed to place Democratic candidates on the slate of a nominally independent party.

The three articles on electoral activity featured in the Winter 1997 issue of New Politics either avoid this issue, or debate it on purely tactical terms. In "Angry Voters with Nowhere to Go," Thomas Harrison even goes so far as to argue that the New Party, the leading organizational proponent of fusion, and the Labor Party, which has yet to nominate a candidate, represent "the most promising initiatives [toward independent political action] in more than fifty years." (10) Paul Buhle in "The 1996 Elections in Perspective" contends that it "is too early to speak intelligently about the experiment"(21) in dual endorsements currently being undertaken by the New Party. In fact, fusion is far from a novel idea. Indeed, debates on the merits of this strategy have catalyzed significant divisions within the left for more than 100 years. Several political parties have already "experimented" with fusion, each time with disastrous results.

The Populists served as the electoral expression for a militant social movement of poor farmers centered in the dirt hills of Texas. In the mid 1880s, the Farmers Alliance developed a dense network of local chapters through its efforts to organize large-scale rural cooperatives. The Alliance then began sending organizers to nearby areas, to the plains states and the South. In 1892 the Alliance was instrumental in founding the Peoples Party, with the goal of challenging the hard-money policies of the two corporate parties. Yet as the Populists expanded beyond their home base, they began attracting opportunistic politicians who were ready to forge statewide deals on the basis of fusion. For instance, in Kansas and Nebraska the Populists participated in joint tickets with the Democratic Party in opposition to the Republican majority. These fusion candidates declined to support the radical planks in the Populist platform, especially demands for low interest rates and government ownership of the railroads. This is a recurring theme in the history of fusion politics. Inevitably, the decision to blur the political lines of demarcation brings with it, as one of its consequences, a dilution in program. The passionate debate within the Peoples Party came to an end in 1896 when fusion supporters convinced the national convention to endorse the Democratic presidential candidate, William Jennings Bryan. Soon thereafter, the party collapsed as a viable organizational structure.¹

THE HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN LABOR PARTY (ALP) IS EVEN MORE INSTRUCTIVE. In the spring of 1936, Sidney Hillman, the president of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers, convened a high-level meeting of union officials and leaders of the Socialist Party right-wing, soon to become the Social Democratic Federation. Hillman had previously gained the approval of President Franklin Roosevelt for a quasi-independent third party for the state of New York. The president was worried, concerned that his electoral base had been eroded, and that many of his potential supporters in New York City would stay at home rather than vote for a Democratic slate dominated by venal Tammany Hall politicians. The ALP was created to help Roosevelt by attracting support from the disaffected, as well as from those current and former members of the Socialist and Communist parties who were unwilling to vote the Democratic Party ticket. Yet the organization was also intended as a pressure group, a point of leverage that would enable progressives to maximize their influence within the Democratic Party.²

Hillman understood that the ALP could only successfully divert votes from Socialist candidates if it presented itself as the nucleus of a third party, an organization that would soon blossom to become a national party of progressive, independent politics. Needless to say, Hillman never had any intention of breaking with Roosevelt, the New Deal, or the Democratic Party. The ALP, as well as its offshoot, the Liberal Party, soon dropped any pretense of independence, serving solely as another line on the ballot for a wide-ranging array of politicians.

The similarities between the ALP and the current Labor Party are striking. Again the organizational structure of a nominally independent party has been initiated from the top by the more progressive elements within the union leadership. Once again rhetorical calls for an independent party of labor are proclaimed, the plan to be implemented in that murky, still to be determined future. In one aspect the ALP actually represented a step beyond the current Labor Party, since the ALP at one point presented a slate of its own candidates for the state legislature and the city council, while the Labor Party leadership has so far balked at such an undertaking.

The 1936 election campaign would see another interesting experiment in fusion politics. In Minnesota the Farmer-Labor Party (FLP) had been building an electoral base for 15 years. Very much a party of moderate reform, it had maintained its independence in part because Minnesota law prohibited fusion, and in part because the state Democratic Party had been controlled by conservatives who refused to cooperate with Farmer-Labor. Once again, Roosevelt, in his eagerness to improve his reelection prospects, opted to shift the terrain. The Democratic candidates for governor and senator withdrew, leaving Farmer-Labor nominees a clear path. In return, the FLP candidate for governor joined the president in stumping the state. The Farmer-Labor Party swept the state in 1936 as it never had before, and yet this case of tacit fusion contributed to the demise of the Party. In 1938, the Democrats again fielded their own candidates, splitting the progressive vote, thus allowing the Republicans back into office. Demoralized, and confronted with a state Democratic apparatus controlled by liberals, Farmer-Labor leaders soon entered into a series of discussions with Democratic politicians that ultimately led, in 1944, to the creation of a merged party, the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party.³

A final test case in fusion occurred in 1948, when former Vice-President Henry Wallace coalesced the progressive opposition to the Cold War hysteria of the Truman Administration. Although the Progressive Party once again advanced the rhetoric of independent political action, it remained well within the orbit of the Democratic Party. The party gained most of its strength in New York, where its affiliate, the American Labor Party, continued to engage in fusion politics, endorsing the more liberal Democratic candidates. In Minnesota, the Progressives sought to implement an extreme version of fusion, hoping to run an independent candidate for president as the official Democrat. The state's Democrats were divided, with many former Farmer-Labor Party members backing Wallace, while the party stalwarts, led by Hubert Humphrey, remained committed to President Truman. When the state convention refused to seat several delegations pledged to Wallace, two separate conventions were convened, both seeking to nominate the official Democratic presidential ticket. Only after the state Minnesota Supreme Court ruled in favor of Truman did the Progressive Party finally decide to abandon its effort to capture the Minnesota Democratic Party, and to qualify Wallace as an independent candidate.⁴

The Progressive Party did not survive the 1948 election as a significant force. Certainly the Progressives had an array of serious problems. The party was built around the personality of a single individual, who soon deserted the party, while its most committed members came from the Communist Party, which exerted a heavy-handed influence in blocking any criticism of the Soviet Union. Nevertheless, the Progressives' flirtations with fusion, as well as its cautious platform of reform, contributed to its rapid demise.

FUSION HAS A LONG AND SORDID PAST. Parties pursuing this strategy have not provided a first step toward a genuinely independent politics. On the contrary, these formations have acted as a safety valve, directing popular discontent into the framework of liberal reform, before collapsing into the mainstream of two party politics. Yet thee is an alternative. There is no inescapable logic compelling a third party to slide back into the mainstream. It can be avoided but only if the third party follows an uncompromising policy of total independence.

In the early 1900s the Socialist Party grew to become a mass party, with significant roots in the working class. Its base of activists had observed the recent collapse of the Populist Party, and had drawn the appropriate lesson. In 1904, the party convention voted that "no state or local organization shall under any circumstances fuse, combine, or compromise with any political party or organization," nor "shall any candidate of the Socialist Party accept any nomination or endorsement from any other party or political organization." The next year Victor Berger, the leader of the party's right-wing, tested the limits of this resolution by publicly endorsing a progressive candidate for judge. Although the election was nonpartisan, the candidate was a prominent member of the Republican Party. Berger's endorsement nearly cost him his position on the national executive committee. After that, neither he nor the Milwaukee party endorsed candidates from the two corporate parties, even in nonpartisan elections.⁵

The three writers in the New Politics symposium start from a very different perspective than that held by the Socialist Party majority in its heyday. They share a common agreement that the recent wave of electoral activity situated on the edge of the two-party mainstream represents a significant step toward a genuinely independent politics. In essence, the underlying argument holds that a viable third party can be built through a continuing process of incremental stages, each taking an additional step in the direction of a total break with the Democratic Party. From this perspective, the Labor Party, the New Party, and even the Ralph Nader presidential campaign constitute first steps in this continuing process. Yet the history of fusion politics demonstrates the exact opposite. The break with the establishment parties must be final and definitive to be lasting. Tentative, fainthearted measures lead only back into the quagmire of two party politics.

Harrison is the only one of the three who directly tackles the issue of fusion, and he chides the New Party for its willingness to endorse liberal Democrats. Yet Harrison accepts the essential premises of the fusion argument, while opposing it on tactical grounds. The New Party sees its threat to run independent candidates as a powerful weapon, cajoling the Democrats to be more responsive to progressive demands. Harrison argues that actually running a slate of independent candidates would be an even more productive tactic, maximizing progressive leverage on the Democratic machine. Thus "in fact, to the extent that an independent party were truly independent and did pose a threat to these [liberal] Democrats, activists would be much more effective in wringing concessions from them." (11) This tacitly accepts the underlying argument that pressuring Democrats constitutes the primary purpose of electoral activity. Once having conceded that, it is difficult to consistently oppose those Democratic politicians who are most likely to be responsive to this pressure. Certainly Ron Dellums is more likely to vote for limited reforms than either Clinton or Dole.

Electoral politics should not be focused on wresting reforms from the Democrats. Systemic social change can only be won through militant direct action, and even then the limits of reform are tightly constricted, and continually narrowing. Socialists engage in electoral politics to articulate a radical critique of capitalism, and a coherent vision of an alternative, cooperative society, not to figure out the best method of convincing Democratic politicians to grant a few insignificant reforms.

In contrast to Harrison, who stresses the positive aspects of the New Party and the Nader campaign, Jane Slaughter seeks to provide a positive spin to the Labor Party. While not unaware of its limitations, she remains hopeful that the organization can break with the two party system. The Labor Party refused to endorse Nader, she concedes, because to do so "would have un directly counter to the Party's leadership strategy, which is based on not alienating union leaders."(27) In fact, the leaders of the Labor Party are themselves union officials anxious to maintain their close ties to the many loyal Democrats within the AFL-CIO leadership. Far more likely than any genuine effort at independent political action, the Labor Party is on course to repeat the history of the ALP before fading back into the two party mainstream.

The Labor Party has been funded and controlled by top officials in the Oil and Chemical Workers (OCAW) and the United Electrical Workers (UE) in the same way top officials in the Ladies Garment Workers and the Amalgamated Clothing Workers funded and controlled the American Labor Party in the 30s. Slaughter argues that Labor Party officials, unlike Hillman, are sincere in their public statements urging the creation of an independent third party. Perhaps, but even if true, it hardly resolves the critical questions. The Labor Party leaders certainly view a social democratic party along the lines of the British Labour Party as an attractive option. (Considering the recent collapse of the Labour Party as even a moderate party of social reform, it would seem that radicals should be highly skeptical of such an option.) Yet these union officials remain pragmatists to the core. Given the specific circumstances prevailing in the United States, they continue to see the labor movement as a pressure group within the Democratic Party. In this context, control of an additional ballot slot provides a certain leverage, with its implicit threat of withholding support for specific, undesirable Democratic candidates. The creation of the Labor Party also provides the union bureaucracy with another means of asserting control over the pervasive, if inchoate, anger of a considerable segment of the rank and file. Thus, as with the American Labor Party, the Labor Party serves both as a point of leverage to pressure the Democratic leadership, and as a conduit for diverting popular discontent into manageable channels.

A GENUINE THIRD PARTY, FREE OF TIES TO THE CORPORATE MAINSTREAM, can only emerge as the outcome of a militant social movement. Yet social movements have their own dynamic, one that inevitably challenges the cautious timidity of the progressive coalition. Instead, Harrison and Slaughter write as friendly advisors to certain sections of the liberal leadership. They hope to coax those who have taken the first steps toward independent political action into a further movement along this trajectory. Once having assumed the perspective of an insider, there is an overwhelming tendency to mute criticisms, and indeed to act as defenders of these liberal leaders.

This can be seen most clearly in the case of Slaughter who supports a crucial deal struck at last year's founding convention of the Labor Party. Instead of approving a clear resolution upholding the right of women to have an abortion, the leadership pushed through a nebulous statement in support of reproductive rights. This left the Labor Party behind the Democrats on this volatile, and yet important, issue. While Harrison criticizes this deal, he praises the Nader campaign while ignoring Nader's decision to entirely duck the question.

As radicals and socialists, we need to remain outside of the progressive coalition as incisive critics of the equivocations and evasions so characteristic of liberal politics. We should be ready to oppose each and every effort at fusion, insisting that meaningful electoral activity outside of the two party system requires a stance of total independence from the two mainstream parties. Finally, we should be prepared to run our own candidates on an explicitly socialist platform. This will not be an easy road to follow, but it is the only one that can lead to the formation of a viable third party that is truly independent of the two party duopoly.

Notes

1. Lawrence Goodwyn, Democratic Promise: The Populist Movement in America (New York: Oxford University Press.) return

2. Steve Fraser, Labor Will Rule: Sidney Hillman and the Rise of American Labor (New York: Free Press, 1991), pp. 363-64. return

3. Millard Gieske, Minnesota Farmer-Laborism: The Third Party Alternative (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1979.) return

4. Karl M. Schmidt, Henry Wallace: Quixotic Campaign 1948 (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1960.) return

5. Eric Chester, Socialists and the Ballot Box (New York: Praeger, 1985), pp. 34-35. return

Contents of No. 23