The Ongoing struggle to build the Labor party in the US

The Ongoing Struggle to Build the Labor Party



In mid-November 2003, Socialist Organizer, the organization that publishes The Organizer newspaper, held its 8th National Convention. The Political Resolution adopted by the delegates assessed the current political situation facing working people in the United States and internationally, and outlined the central political tasks for Socialist Organizer in the months ahead. At the center of the convention deliberations was the need to make a major shift in our work toward building Socialist Organizer and recruiting the significant periphery of youth and union activists to our organization.One of questions addressed in the Political Resolution was an initial balance sheet of the Labor Party that was formed in 1996 in Cleveland. We are reprinting below major excerpts from this portion of the Resolution. Our aim in publishing this text is to open a wider discussion among unionists and activists on the lessons of this initial stage in the fight to build a Labor Party in this country.
The Labor Party that was founded in 1996 by unions representing close to 2 million workers is in a deep political crisis. For many, if not most, unionists and activists who founded this party, the LP has all but self-destructed.
To understand the current state of the Labor Party it is essential to understand the deep ruling class offensive against the trade unions, particularly after 9/11—as well as the heightened pressures since the Bush “selection” to embrace “lesser-evil,” pro-Democratic Party politics.
Without a doubt, the Labor Party is in deep retreat. The unions that launched the Labor Party in 1996, after five years of an organizing campaign through Labor Party Advocates (LPA), have pulled back from their support to the Labor Party. Union funding of the LP has all but dried up.
The founding of the LP represented in and of itself a major step—potentially a giant step—in the break with the twin parties of capitalism: the Democrats and Republicans. But it was only a step, and it had to followed by other steps for the break with the Republocrats to be consummated.
Even after the founding of the Labor Party, the main unions that formed the Labor Party were unwilling to break with the Democratic Party on the electoral plane—just as they decried the twin parties of Big Business and proclaimed that the bosses have two parties, and the workers need their own party. Some of unions at the origin of the LP—to be sure—were open to supporting LP candidates against the Democrats once the party were in a position to run viable LP candidates for public office. This is not insignificant.
The task facing the Labor Party following the founding of the LP was to compel the unions at the helm of the Labor Party to continue taking steps, even small ones so long as they moved forward in the direction of a definitive break with the parties of capitalism. Central among those steps was to have these unions break from their reliance on the Democrats in the electoral arena and support running LP candidates for public office against the Democrats and Republicans, beginning at the local level.
Supporters of an electoral Labor Party mobilized for the Second National Convention of the Labor Party in November 1998. There, following a concerted political struggle, the Labor Party adopted a policy on electoral strategy that was reasonable: the Labor Party could now run candidates for political office, provided there was substantial union support for this candidacy, the local LP unit had a recruitment plan, and the national LP leadership authorized this candidacy. Adoption of this electoral strategy resolution represented a significant step forward.
Bush “Selection” Adds Obstacles
But the “selection” of George W. Bush in 2000 changed the political landscape in the unions. Even the most vehemently anti-Democratic Party union officials in the LP stated that the focus of their political work had to be dumping the Republicans in 2002 and then 2004. (So long as Clinton and the Democrats were in office, the unions’ ire could be directed at the Democrats. Out of office, the pressures to dump the Republicans intensified. With the Democrats out of office, the objective obstacles to helping advance the Labor Party on the line of a clean break with the Democrats multiplied.)
Given the failure of the LP to present LP candidates at any level, working people looking for independent political action in the 2000 election flocked to the Green Party and its national candidate: Ralph Nader (who had been a longtime advocate and supporter of the Labor Party). The Green Party, which was weak and had no national base, immediately jumped into the void created by the Labor Party’s refusal to become an electoral party. The old axiom that politics abhors a void was validated in full force.
The first request presented to the Labor Party national leadership to authorize a local LP chapter to endorse a LP candidate for public office was presented by the Golden Gate (San Francisco) chapter of the LP in the spring of 2001. The San Francisco Labor Council (AFL-CIO) agreed to run a slate of labor candidates for a Public Energy Board that would administer a Municipal Utility District (MUD), also on the ballot. One of the candidates for the MUD Board, Robin David, was an active member of the Labor Party and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. (Supporters of The Organizer newspaper played a major role in this local public power campaign and in pushing the LP leadership to get behind this effort.)
The national LP leadership authorized the local Golden Gate LP chapter to run Robin David as a Labor Party candidate for the MUD Board, which was a breakthrough—but the LP leadership did not publicize or promote this candidacy in its press or among the affiliated LP unions.
As it turned out, with the help of considerable ballot mishandling, the effort to municipalize electrical generation and distribution and form a public power authority was defeated by just a few hundred votes—and the Labor Party candidate failed to be elected. Most activists in the S.F. labor movement believe firmly that if the LP national leadership had helped in even the modest way requested by the local LP chapter, the outcome of the election might have been different. This demoralized a great number of LP members in the San Francisco Bay Area and across the country.
In the summer of 2002, the national Labor Party held its third national convention. The event was scaled back considerably. The Golden Gate chapter of the Labor Party managed to convene a meeting that brought together a third of the convention delegates in support of an electoral strategy. The lessons and experience of the LP candidacy in San Francisco were at the center of the discussion, which also featured presentations by leading LP officers, including its national co-chair, Baldemar Velasquez. This showed that a substantial sector of the LP membership and leadership remains committed to building a genuine and fighting Labor Party.
The national LP leadership refused to organize a discussion on the balance sheet of the San Francisco Robin David electoral campaign—and all but closed the door to running LP candidates for public office in the foreseeable future.
Our Central Strategic Task
There are still a number of functioning units of the Labor Party—particularly in the state of Ohio, which has a functioning LP state organization—and LP members across the country continue to build its campaigns, particularly the campaign for single-payer healthcare and the campaign for free higher education.
Socialist Organizer members will continue to fight to build a genuine Labor Party, strengthening those LP units that still exist and working to launch local labor-community candidates for public office that can serve as an example to be followed, while also seeking to build LP units with unions willing to challenge the bosses in the electoral arena.
Where possible, our members and supporters will seek to link the LP’s fight for Free Higher Education with (1) the ongoing efforts of the Continuations Committee of the International Conference in Defense of Public Education, and (2) the Education Caucus of USLAW. This LP campaign for higher education, against war, and against the privatization of education can draw people to the fight for an independent Labor Party based on the unions.
The fight to build a Labor Party in the United States is far from over. This first stage of building the LP may not have succeeded. True. But the Labor Party message has been disseminated more widely than at any time in recent memory, and, just as important, we in Socialist Organizer have met through our work in the LP important labor leaders and activists who remain committed to this fight and who will join us at another stage in the struggle to build the Labor Party.
The fight to get the trade unions to break with the parties of the bosses and to build a Labor Party remains our central strategic task in this country.