Independent Politics: The Green Party Strategy Debate

by Howie Hawkins (Editor)

“A valuable contribution to our thinking about that controversial and difficult subject—the role of an opposition third party.”—Howard Zinn

“This is an invaluable sourcebook: rich in ideas.’”—Mike Davis

Ralph Nader, Peter Camejo, David Cobb, Sharon Smith, Norman Solomon, and other Green Party members and allies ask: Can we break the two-party stranglehold on U.S. politics? and debate strategy for how to build a challenge to the Republicans and an increasingly corporate Democratic Party.

Howie Hawkins is a Teamster and Green activist in Syracuse, New York.

Genres: Politics, Nonfiction

328 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2006

About the author

Howie Hawkins is a cofounder of the Green Party in the US and a 2020 Green Party presidential candidate. He was the first US candidate to campaign for a Green New Deal in 2010. Howie became active in “The Movement” for civil rights and against the war in Vietnam in the 1960s as a teenager in the San Francisco Bay Area. From the start, he’s been committed to independent working-class politics for a democratic, socialist, and ecological society. Outside of electoral politics, Howie has been a constant organizer in peace, justice, union, and environmental campaigns. His writing has appeared in Against the Current, Black Agenda Report, CounterPunch, Green Politics, International Socialist Review, Labor Notes, Z Magazine, and other publications. He is the editor of, and a contributor to, Independent Politics: The Green Party Strategy Debate (Haymarket Books, 2006).

Reviews

[Micah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Useful for historical research into the post-2000 evolution (devolution?) of the Green Party after Ralph Nader's controversial 2000 run for president.

[Christopher · Rating 4 out of 5]

A well-curated collection of essays and arguments for and against the issue that divided the green party so starkly beginning in 2004. Do you run a popular candidate full on trying to get the most votes regardless of who is currently in office? Or, do you run a 'safe states' strategy that means the greens don't actively challenge the Democrats in battleground states. To many including myself this is the worse type of capitulation and betrayal, but others think the Greens must capitulate to bloodthirty imperialist Democrats so as to avoid the much worst Republican alternative. This was a reread for me after 10 years and I found it very timely as during this book the liberals were crying 'Anybody But Bush' now they'll be crying 'Anybody but Trump'

[David · Rating 2 out of 5]

Unfortunately, Howie Hawkins doesn't speak for the contemporary Green Party, which can differ greatly by country and by state. The book is also quite dated. I have come to the realization that we need an explicitly socialist party of the working class. Howie, as an old labor lefty, is as out of place in the Green Party as the rare specimens like him are out of place in the Democratic Party.

[Marshall · Rating 3 out of 5]

The world of progressive politics changed in 2000, when Nader took the left by storm, educating many people of the complicit injustices of both major parties. I was one of those people, a Libertarian at the time, and I found Nader extremely persuasive. He either argued for my Libertarian views, or else he persuaded me, but when all was said and done, I changed my voter registration to Green.

By 2004, it started becoming clear that Nader wasn't a typical Green. In fact, he wasn't a Green at all. He only played one for that election to help build it as an independent third party. In 2004, the Greens allowed themselves to be co-opted by the Democratic Party for fear of another term of Bush. This seemed to me like a suicidal move. What's the point of campaigning if your strategy is to avoid being too successful? Nevermind that Nader did not in fact spoil the election for Gore in 2000. In this winner-take-all system, "election spoiling" is the only possible way a third party could succeed. Exactly how bad does the Republican need to be before the Greens go running back to the Democrats? If they're unwilling to spoil elections for another party, why not just pack up and move in with that party? In fact, that's exactly what many Greens did in 2004.

This book helped me make sense of this whole charade. It's a collection of articles by various Greens, making up the gist of the debate between running a "safe states" strategy versus being a truly independent party. It's well-balanced, and presents all arguments, although the editor was arguing for independence. Peter Camejo did a beautiful job at articulating the independence argument in the Avacado Declaration. In other articles, it was argued that the primary election for David Cobb and the "safe states" strategy was unfair and biased. I didn't before realize just how many internal problems the Green Party has.

My verdict is that the Green Party is an immature, scattered, disorganized, harmless little party consisting mostly of socialists and disgruntled Democrats. Aside from Nader, they don't seem to take themselves very seriously. The Democrats in the Greens will ensure that they never really upset their chosen party, which basically renders them irrelevant. When they're not busy bickering with each other, or trying to avoid speaking up too loudly for fear of the Democrats, they make some good arguments. But they're not Nader, and I'm neither a Democrat nor a socialist, so I probably won't be voting Green anymore.

[Soph Nova · Rating 4 out of 5]

Valuable collection of perspectives and primary documents about strategy in the 2004 elections - very relevant for the 2016 fight.