Third Parties Must Unite!

If not now, When?

In American history, third parties play an important role only in times of economic crisis, war and party realignment. Now is such a time. Can we depend on ourselves to avoid the stereotypical pitfalls of third party infighting? “Not because it is easy, but because it is hard!”

Suggestions for an emergency program for peace and economic recovery:

• Abundant energy and water resources at the lowest possible cost
• Environmental restoration through “big science” like advanced nuclear
• Divert Alaskan water runoff to California and Southwest
• Defend The Bill of Rights; no censorship
• Tax Wall Street speculation to relieve Main Street
• Negotiate Peace
• Stop treating half the population as “Enemies of the State”
• Nationalize the Federal Reserve
• (Lincoln and FDR effectively did this); create Public Banks
• Development projects for the third world to ease the refugee crisis
• End the War on Drugs
• 0% Student Loans; Free State, Vocational and Community College
• $0 Down on First Homes (the time it takes to save a down payment will stall a generation)
• Intelligence Community guardrails
• Revisit FDR’s Economic Bill of Rights
• Encourage strong unions and union building
• Second Works Progress Administration (WPA) to oversee national building initiative of abundant affordable housing; humane, state of the art mental health and rehab facilities.

 

Third Parties in American history:

Party alliances have had an important role during turbulent moments in American history.
The founders of the nation - such as Alexander Hamilton and John Adams, were mainly “Federalists” who aligned around what came to be known as The American System. This was the view that the Federal government should exercise power in controlling a central bank, building public infrastructure, and other features of the early American administrations that helped build the country following the American Revolution.

Just a few generations later, as slavery became an important economic force in the southern states, proponents of “states' rights” fought to nullify these federal powers and elevate the power of the states. This is what allowed for the expansion of slavery, the expulsion of the Cherokees, the breaking of the national bank, etc.

In 1828, John Quincy Adams - the last of the original “American System” leaders, was nominated by an alliance called the Anti-Masonic Party, who were united against Jackson's anti-Federalist reforms. Adams was a “National-Republican,” but the Anti-Masons nominated him and other Anti-Jacksonians in 1828 and 1832, by innovating the use of party nominating conventions.

The Anti-Masons and the National-Republicans ultimately merged to create the Whig party, which was founded by Henry Clay, and became the major opponent of Jackson’s Democratic Party.

By 1860 the Whigs too had dissolved, and essentially re-formed as the leading force of the Republican Party. The Republicans were a coalition of parties and interest groups who formed around a declaration of principles, including stopping the expansion of slavery, and stronger federal power to build American industry, to distribute farmland to settlers via what became the Homestead Act, to use tariffs to reduce the de-industrializing force of British imports, and other demands that became the principles of the Lincoln administration.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt culminated the overturning of the Democratic Party - from a Jacksonian “state’s rights” party to a coalition representing the same forces and principles as the Federalists and Lincoln’s Republicans. One of the essential forces that made this happen was the Farmer-Labor Party, a coalition of third parties that became an important force in the Midwest and had to be brought into an unstable alliance by the Democrats. They were responsible for pushing key FDR economic policies like “parity” grain prices that helped US farms recover following the Depression.

Third parties in America have never directly achieved political power. But when they combine around a short list of specific demands, they have the power to turn over the apple cart and make progress possible. We need to create enough of a center of gravity that either the Democrats or Republicans NEED these demands to win elections, and are forced to conform their policies as such.

This is why the demands must be economic, and they must be populist. A third party coalition can’t come to the table with fringe ideas that are not acceptable to the majority of the population - this includes deeply held positions on climate change, racial justice, etc. Ours must be economic demands that will raise living standards for most Americans, about which there is no good rebuttal, and that the major parties are ignoring.

We must align on four demands:

• Negotiate Peace. We can not risk global war for banks, financiers and multinational corporations. We must seek negotiated settlement to conflicts in Ukraine, Taiwan and elsewhere, a drawdown of military expenditures, and we must pursue areas of peaceful international cooperation like economic development of the 3rd world, environmental restoration and “big science” like advanced nuclear and hydrogen energy technology.
• An American economy based on production. Too long has our economy been based on financial speculation, low wages and exploitation of developing countries. We must pursue an era of high-wage industrial capitalism - the production of the next generation of technologies and goods by American workers, at high wages, with high environmental standards. We are losing entire generations to the “gig economy.” Young people should be able to raise healthy, prosperous families with safe, meaningful, creative work in building and maintaining our infrastructure, producing high-quality goods and growing high-quality food.
• Control our own money system. The Federal Reserve is unaccountable to our elected representatives, and serves the interests of banks and speculators. We need to do what America’s founders and greatest leaders did: seize control of our central bank to finance the needs of the American people, chiefly public infrastructure and to restore our productive powers. Think of Lincoln’s Greenbacks building the rail and steel industries or FDR’s Fed financing the Tennessee Valley Authority. We don’t need more money - we need control.
• A government that serves and elevates the American people. We have entered a period where each administration treats half of the population as “enemies of the state.” We are faced with unprecedented restrictions on speech, mandates that override our bodily autonomy, and promotion of cultural values that do not support the formation of healthy families, racial harmony and community building. We do not seek to exclude any Americans based on race, sexual or gender identity, but must also not be “divided and conquered” by submitting the majority to the values of small identity groups. As President Kennedy famously said, “a rising tide lifts all boats.” Our policies on the economy, environment, immigration and other issues must seek primarily to elevate the living standards of all Americans, restore the availability of productive, high wage work, and to provide an environment where the American people can work out their differences peacefully and voluntarily, not through presidential decree.

Downloads:

Unite for Peace flyer (pdf, 8.5x11", 2-up)

Unite for Peace poster (pdf, 24x36")