Third Parties and Leftist Mobilization

To be the millionth blogger to post about the DeLong/Ehrenreich dispute, I agree with David that DeLong’s criticism was in general overwrought. While I do think that some elements of the Nader faction of the left see politics primarily as a vehicle of narcisstic self-expression, I don’t think that Ehrenreich is one of them. And given that her op-ed column, whether one fully agrees with all her arguments or not, is in the top 1% of quality as op-ed columns go, calling it a “waste of paper and ink” is beyond silly.

The Henry Farrell post that David links to, however, contains a crucial argument that Matt Yglesias missed in his critique. In defense of supporting Nader, Farrell writes:

The only way to create a real alternative is to build an alternative social movement – and alternative party – on the ground, which necessarily is going to involve conflict with the institutional interests of the Democratic party.

Farrell, like Ehrenreich, assumes that building alternative social movements requires also building a third party. I’m absolutely baffled by this argument. In the context of the American constitutional structure, third party politics is a terrible strategy for building alternative social movements. It consumes enormous amounts of resources but provides few benefits, fractures coalitions, and has unfortunate side effects (like, say, leading to the election of the most reactionary President in many decades.) It should be noted as well Nader and Green affiliated groups have not been the ones that have benefited from anti-Bush countermobilization–their funding is down. (And I’m one reason why; after the election I pulled my monthly WASHPRIG contribution and donated it elsewhere. If Nader and his supporters want to elect Republican Presidents, they can do it with their own dime.) The rise in the mobilization of movement conservatives didn’t require a third party. It’s true that the left needs to build more of a base outside of the Democratic structure, and conflict will be inevitable. Democratic politics extends far beyond electoral politics. But, especially at the national level, third party politics is actively counterproductive to movement building.

Like Dave, I’m not inclined to think much about whether the party system in the US is optimal, for the same reason I don’t spend much time complaining about how much I hate the Senate–because it’s not going away. The combination of a first-past-the-post legislative system and winner-take-all system for electing the President make a two-party system as inevitable as any institutional structure can be, and changing it is virtually impossible. The two-party system isn’t going to go away if only people really wish that it will go away, and to pretend otherwise obstructs the potential for progressive social change. The left needs to be better mobilized, but third party politics is a bad way to accomplish it (which is why tying together left mobilization and a left third party is generally assumed rather than argued.)