Partyism serves as a crucial smokescreen for the autocratic tendencies of the American regime that Justin recently highlighted. When you add together the prohibitive costs of elections, winner-take-all states, gerrymandered districts, the electoral college, the Senate and the filibuster, and the influence of partisan judges alongside relentless lobbying along party lines, it's clear that the political landscape is rigged. We don’t need to delve into "policy outcomes" to recognize that a bipartisan consensus will dictate everything. Martin Gilens’ book, "Affluence and Influence," published in 2012, seemed widely read in polisci-world. Yet, their findings were met with a collective W/e. My surmise is that Gilens and Page's appeal had more to do with some fancy polisci statistics that they used to carefully measure blades of grass to confirm what we already knew: the bipartisan consensus overwhelmingly caters to the affluent. And then came Trump, the gift to partyism that keeps giving—no need to be concerned about “nice things” at home. Don't be childish! And, of course, there is no need to be concerned about the holocaust in Gaza, mass murder in Lebanon, and picking a war with Russia and China. Those things are, wait for it, part of the bipartisan consensus! What we need to do is appeal to the median voter, who is thankfully forever stuck in partyism.
Perhaps the most damaging aspect of partyism is its profound brain drain. As an (erstwhile) political science lecturer, I often met students eager to pursue progressive or even tankie politics being forced into internships or paid positions with Democratic Congress members or required to work on campaigns for Democratic candidates. For those aspiring to work in international politics, the options often narrow down to organizations like NDI or NED. In small-town America, city council offers some appeal until the frustrating reality that mundane but necessary policies—like installing bicycle lanes or enforcing regular inspections on local landlords don't match the will of bipartisan consensus.
I'd say brain drain is related to the empire product that is induced hopelessness (not dissimilar to kadri's analysis of capitalism creating waste). Literally throwing away eager talent for meaningful change into the meat grinder
Democracy is not mentioned one time in the US constitution. I was aware of that but I didn’t realize how much of a sham representative government is in the USA. Thanks for sharpening our focus past the facade with your concept of partyism.
As far as mythologized revolutions are concerned, the American one is the most overrated in history. Am I wrong? Haiti, France, Russia, Iran, etc., were all more substantive than the one in the colonies. And anything good in the US constitution was borrowed from somewhere else, like Locke and Montesquieu. They were not original thinkers, the so-called Founders. Also, when the same people stay in power, then it actually isn’t a revolution. So, it’s essentially the same slaveowning Anglo-American gentry ruling us up until today. The oligarchs behind partyism. They were not actually overthrown, they just removed the royal governors.
I had hope in the British Parliamentary system. Way more advanced than America’s backward system. Others here probably can say more on this topic, but when you fashion your constitution after the Roman Republic then indeed anything like Athenian democracy was deliberately aborted from the beginning.
The problem in my opinion is not the idea of the party itself, but the fact that those parties have let body snatchers, replicants, climb the ranks, substituting the true political debate which should bottom up, with the financing of big capitals which decides the politics direction of the parties in a top top down movement.
Something was shattered in 2024 when all that still seemed solid after 2008 melted into thin air, so these illusion dispelling exercises are timely.
This article feels much closer to the understanding of politics in the 1930s than to anything written after the 1960s. It makes sense since people in the 30s had their own disillusionment after "the" World War and "the" Great Depression ;-).
Historically the Left's view on (party) politics have been quite nuanced:
Communist parties tend(ed) to share Justin's skepticism, reject "partyism", and instead directly organize for the coming revolution. They would still contest elections at every level, including labor union elections; but primarily as a vehicle to build power, train cadres, and raise class awareness.
Social democrats split with the communists over making it a priority to build a mass base and take state power through the ballot box, seeing that the lower and "middle" classes have the numbers. They were proud of having forced the universal ballot from the cold hands of the aristocracy and business elites, but had few illusions about how the game was rigged. They used to have a fairly elaborate set of strategies for surviving the "long march through the institutions" with their sense of class consciousness intact.
Rather than take over existing power structures through revolution or elections, anarchists are usually more interested in building new structures "in the shell of the old". Anarchists tend to reject representational democracy itself and so rarely form parties, apart from standing in labor union elections. Generally anarchists tend to prefer delegates to representatives: power remains with organized assemblies to whom delegates report to; so as delegates get co-opted or bought off, their temporary function is passed on to someone more dependable. Think of the "dual power" situation between parliament (Duma) and the assemblies (Soviets) Justin and David Power covered in their historical podcast.
The neo-liberal counter-revolutionaries intimately disdained representational democracy knowing that their program would never have mass appeal. They devised a master plan to shift power away from nation state bureaucracies and instead into (1) corporations that answer to investors rather than the electorate, and (2) unaccountable often supra-national institutions (IMF and World Bank, NAFTA, arbitration courts, central banks...). Thus no elected "populist", lacking actual power, could ever actually deliver on any significant promise. Party politics is instead sold as spectator sport where the establishment wins either way. I recommend Philip Mirowski's papers and his 2013 book "Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste" for detailed documentation of this conscious strategy.
The "neo-liberal thought collective" has been quite successful at co-opting most social democratic parties in the West. Communist parties have been pushed to the margins, in part violently, in part due to infighting and lack of recent success stories. Anarchists were thought extinct but have been hiding in every nook and cranny ;-) and there is now much broader awareness of power and hierarchies from the workplace to public spaces to family structures.
Current left projects, including political parties, do a much better job of combining the concerns of the historical 3 trends. For example, Hugo Chavez tried a military coup first, then actually took power through elections, then used state power to facilitate creating worker-run co-operatives directly answering to local communities.
So I think we are justified in rejecting "partyism" for all the reasons that Justin and commentators have presented. At the same time we have to be careful not to play into the hands of the neo-liberals who correctly fear actual democracy and did their best to defang it.
Clearly we do not recently have a politician of Chavez' track record in the West - and Venezuelans paid a heavy price for their peaceful revolution. However, nation states are beginning to reassert power, i.e. (right wing) populists and conservatives have begun to re-create state-run industrial policy and re-nationalize utilities; reformed social democrats have come quite close to power (i.e. Jeremy Corbyn in the UK); elections may matter much more again, but as part of a larger toolbox.
How can it be cartoon characters have any say in War or Peace or the State? You write regarding a polity "they are teaching the rest of the world the best political system invented so far, the worst one except for all the others as Churchill said, the system at the end of history as Fukuyama declared, the system that peoples around the globe fought and bled for, multiparty democracy." However no, teaching only the Greeks. In Herodotus Thrasybulus
instead of responding to the question of how to rule, takes the messenger for a walk in a field of wheat, where he proceeds to cut off all of the best and tallest ears of wheat.
"If you ever feel useless, remember it took 20 years, *2,459 American military personnel lives*, trillions of dollars and 4 US Presidents to replace the Taliban with the Taliban" - Norman Finkelstein
"You know who’s not in this picture? You.” No Trump in sight either—though Melania’s present. Then, again, who (as in “You”) would want to be lumped with Trump?
Thank you, Justin, for your fantastic work and analyses!
Photoshop has helped generations of consensus builders, that and accidents or "suicides" helped along in places like the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York City
Partyism serves as a crucial smokescreen for the autocratic tendencies of the American regime that Justin recently highlighted. When you add together the prohibitive costs of elections, winner-take-all states, gerrymandered districts, the electoral college, the Senate and the filibuster, and the influence of partisan judges alongside relentless lobbying along party lines, it's clear that the political landscape is rigged. We don’t need to delve into "policy outcomes" to recognize that a bipartisan consensus will dictate everything. Martin Gilens’ book, "Affluence and Influence," published in 2012, seemed widely read in polisci-world. Yet, their findings were met with a collective W/e. My surmise is that Gilens and Page's appeal had more to do with some fancy polisci statistics that they used to carefully measure blades of grass to confirm what we already knew: the bipartisan consensus overwhelmingly caters to the affluent. And then came Trump, the gift to partyism that keeps giving—no need to be concerned about “nice things” at home. Don't be childish! And, of course, there is no need to be concerned about the holocaust in Gaza, mass murder in Lebanon, and picking a war with Russia and China. Those things are, wait for it, part of the bipartisan consensus! What we need to do is appeal to the median voter, who is thankfully forever stuck in partyism.
Perhaps the most damaging aspect of partyism is its profound brain drain. As an (erstwhile) political science lecturer, I often met students eager to pursue progressive or even tankie politics being forced into internships or paid positions with Democratic Congress members or required to work on campaigns for Democratic candidates. For those aspiring to work in international politics, the options often narrow down to organizations like NDI or NED. In small-town America, city council offers some appeal until the frustrating reality that mundane but necessary policies—like installing bicycle lanes or enforcing regular inspections on local landlords don't match the will of bipartisan consensus.
really important point about brain drain.
I'd say brain drain is related to the empire product that is induced hopelessness (not dissimilar to kadri's analysis of capitalism creating waste). Literally throwing away eager talent for meaningful change into the meat grinder
Democracy is not mentioned one time in the US constitution. I was aware of that but I didn’t realize how much of a sham representative government is in the USA. Thanks for sharpening our focus past the facade with your concept of partyism.
As far as mythologized revolutions are concerned, the American one is the most overrated in history. Am I wrong? Haiti, France, Russia, Iran, etc., were all more substantive than the one in the colonies. And anything good in the US constitution was borrowed from somewhere else, like Locke and Montesquieu. They were not original thinkers, the so-called Founders. Also, when the same people stay in power, then it actually isn’t a revolution. So, it’s essentially the same slaveowning Anglo-American gentry ruling us up until today. The oligarchs behind partyism. They were not actually overthrown, they just removed the royal governors.
I had hope in the British Parliamentary system. Way more advanced than America’s backward system. Others here probably can say more on this topic, but when you fashion your constitution after the Roman Republic then indeed anything like Athenian democracy was deliberately aborted from the beginning.
The problem in my opinion is not the idea of the party itself, but the fact that those parties have let body snatchers, replicants, climb the ranks, substituting the true political debate which should bottom up, with the financing of big capitals which decides the politics direction of the parties in a top top down movement.
Something was shattered in 2024 when all that still seemed solid after 2008 melted into thin air, so these illusion dispelling exercises are timely.
This article feels much closer to the understanding of politics in the 1930s than to anything written after the 1960s. It makes sense since people in the 30s had their own disillusionment after "the" World War and "the" Great Depression ;-).
Historically the Left's view on (party) politics have been quite nuanced:
Communist parties tend(ed) to share Justin's skepticism, reject "partyism", and instead directly organize for the coming revolution. They would still contest elections at every level, including labor union elections; but primarily as a vehicle to build power, train cadres, and raise class awareness.
Social democrats split with the communists over making it a priority to build a mass base and take state power through the ballot box, seeing that the lower and "middle" classes have the numbers. They were proud of having forced the universal ballot from the cold hands of the aristocracy and business elites, but had few illusions about how the game was rigged. They used to have a fairly elaborate set of strategies for surviving the "long march through the institutions" with their sense of class consciousness intact.
Rather than take over existing power structures through revolution or elections, anarchists are usually more interested in building new structures "in the shell of the old". Anarchists tend to reject representational democracy itself and so rarely form parties, apart from standing in labor union elections. Generally anarchists tend to prefer delegates to representatives: power remains with organized assemblies to whom delegates report to; so as delegates get co-opted or bought off, their temporary function is passed on to someone more dependable. Think of the "dual power" situation between parliament (Duma) and the assemblies (Soviets) Justin and David Power covered in their historical podcast.
The neo-liberal counter-revolutionaries intimately disdained representational democracy knowing that their program would never have mass appeal. They devised a master plan to shift power away from nation state bureaucracies and instead into (1) corporations that answer to investors rather than the electorate, and (2) unaccountable often supra-national institutions (IMF and World Bank, NAFTA, arbitration courts, central banks...). Thus no elected "populist", lacking actual power, could ever actually deliver on any significant promise. Party politics is instead sold as spectator sport where the establishment wins either way. I recommend Philip Mirowski's papers and his 2013 book "Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste" for detailed documentation of this conscious strategy.
The "neo-liberal thought collective" has been quite successful at co-opting most social democratic parties in the West. Communist parties have been pushed to the margins, in part violently, in part due to infighting and lack of recent success stories. Anarchists were thought extinct but have been hiding in every nook and cranny ;-) and there is now much broader awareness of power and hierarchies from the workplace to public spaces to family structures.
Current left projects, including political parties, do a much better job of combining the concerns of the historical 3 trends. For example, Hugo Chavez tried a military coup first, then actually took power through elections, then used state power to facilitate creating worker-run co-operatives directly answering to local communities.
So I think we are justified in rejecting "partyism" for all the reasons that Justin and commentators have presented. At the same time we have to be careful not to play into the hands of the neo-liberals who correctly fear actual democracy and did their best to defang it.
Clearly we do not recently have a politician of Chavez' track record in the West - and Venezuelans paid a heavy price for their peaceful revolution. However, nation states are beginning to reassert power, i.e. (right wing) populists and conservatives have begun to re-create state-run industrial policy and re-nationalize utilities; reformed social democrats have come quite close to power (i.e. Jeremy Corbyn in the UK); elections may matter much more again, but as part of a larger toolbox.
Donor Depended Democrazy
How can it be cartoon characters have any say in War or Peace or the State? You write regarding a polity "they are teaching the rest of the world the best political system invented so far, the worst one except for all the others as Churchill said, the system at the end of history as Fukuyama declared, the system that peoples around the globe fought and bled for, multiparty democracy." However no, teaching only the Greeks. In Herodotus Thrasybulus
instead of responding to the question of how to rule, takes the messenger for a walk in a field of wheat, where he proceeds to cut off all of the best and tallest ears of wheat.
"If you ever feel useless, remember it took 20 years, *2,459 American military personnel lives*, trillions of dollars and 4 US Presidents to replace the Taliban with the Taliban" - Norman Finkelstein
If that is Valarie Jarret in the far right background, then this really is the perfect picture of it's a club and you're not in it.
"Elections channel nearly all the mass energy for change into the false hope of change, stabilizing corporate rule and hiding it behind the scenes.."
The United States government is a joke, our policies are shameful, and politicians are a disgrace
"You know who’s not in this picture? You.” No Trump in sight either—though Melania’s present. Then, again, who (as in “You”) would want to be lumped with Trump?
Thank you, Justin, for your fantastic work and analyses!
Photoshop has helped generations of consensus builders, that and accidents or "suicides" helped along in places like the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York City
Trumps wife shows it all with her clenched fist!
So true.
Photo caption:
ALL IN THE FAMILY
The only person missing from this photo is Archie Bunker.
Spot on, sadly.
Yay democracy?
Very wise