A Green Party that will win (Part II)

Independence Day, 2023

A Green Party that will win

Part II

Emanuel Pastreich

Offer concrete benefits to working class people

The Green Party must offer something of real value to working people in return for their support and it must make membership in the Green Party something of profound significance for those brave enough and passionate enough to join the struggle to expand the party across the country rapidly in the face of massive opposition from corporate oligarchy.

In order for a political party to be successful, there must be a fundamental contract between the party and its supporters.

The Republican Party can count on strong support from multinational corporations, arms manufacturers, and billionaires because it promises, and it delivers, contracts with the Federal government worth billions of dollars, promotes endless war, and carries out a massive deregulation of the economy that allows the wealthy to consolidate their power.

The Democratic Party once relied on the support of unions and citizens of communities who faced oppression or discrimination for support. It returned that support by pushing for legislation with real teeth from the 1930s until the 1970s.

But the decay of institutions in the United States created a political wasteland wherein Bill Clinton was able to embrace the concept of “democracy for multinational corporations,” a radical reinvention of the Democratic Party. In this new political reality, he and his strategists abandoned the appeal to citizens at the local level for support and instead cozied up to IT firms, investment banks, and entertainment conglomerates who could deliver big money and who felt they were not getting the political access that oil companies and real estate speculators enjoyed with the Republican Party.

A real political competition between the parties resulted, but it was a brutal war between divergent corporate interests. Google was the victim of discrimination and oppression and it deserved to be granted the same welfare benefits as Lockheed Martin. The needs of ordinary workers dropped out of the equation.

In order to seduce intellectuals into accepting this scam, the salaries of administrators at universities and NGOs, at newspapers and TV stations, increased until they were many times the salaries of ordinary workers. It was a bribe given to those in authority who were collaborators in the corporate takeover of the entire country in the 1990s.

Thereafter, the Democratic Party focused on catchy items like abortion, ethnic identity, and the needs of an imagined “middle class.” These issues were treated using flashy advertising campaigns, while political operatives offstage dismantled the mechanisms by which citizens could have actual input in the formulation of policy within the party, or in government.

Policy was made up by consulting firms working for corporations who then fed it to the Democratic Party. The politicians started spending all their time raising the big money needed to sell pro-Democrat citizens this poisonous agenda through the commercial media, and other hidden persuaders in academia, and elsewhere.

The Democratic Party became the Trojan Horse offered to the progressives who wanted to save the remaining scraps of the New Deal, and the Republican Party became the Trojan Horse for those who stressed values and spiritual independence.

The fatal assumption of the Green Party, even today, is that somehow the Green Party will raise enough money from its supporters to compete with multinationals, somehow it will convince the corporate media to start covering the Green Party in the way that it covers cardboard messiahs like Donald Trump, and somehow, progressively, increase the impact of the party within the institutions of government and media that are now so hostile to workers.

If the Green Party cannot offer the working people who support it concrete benefits right now, and not just vague promises of a more just and equal society at some future date, it has zero chance of coming to power in a political system controlled by two political parties who actively block all efforts of third parties and independents to participate in the political debate.

The Congress offers a silly debate between harmless politicians for the entertainment of citizens which serves as a velvet glove to cover the steel fist of corporate power. The only solace offered to citizens is a narcissistic culture that focuses on personal needs rather than solidarity and that seduces us, dragging us deep into the cavern of identity politics from which there is no return.

If the corporate parties depend on money, the Green Party must depend on people, brave, unrelenting, motivated people who are ready to work together in communities, and across the nation, twenty-four hours a day. That means that the Green Party right does not need any money. It needs inspiring ideas, powerful speeches, effective community organizing, practical knowledge, accurate journalism, and, above all, tangible services for the community.

A single mother who has no job, but who is willing to work hard organizing the people on her block, building a committed local movement against corporate control that is economically independent, would be far more valuable for the Green Party than an upper-middle class lawyer who gives five thousand dollars a year to alleviate the guilt that he feels about his privileges.

The Green Party as the government that does not exist

There is a truth that many purposely hide from us: The Green Party does not have to win elections before it can start transforming American society.

The Green Party can start today to play the critical role of organizing the people, starting with the working class, to form their own autonomous organizations at the local level for self-help and mutual support. Voting for a Green Candidate will be just a part of that effort.

The federal and state governments have been completely privatized, transformed into the sock puppets of IT firms serving multinational banks. We face two forms of totalitarian rule: the enfeebled and castrated government at the state and federal level and the cruel and despotic government of finance referred to as “the private sector.”

The Green Party can serve the role in society that the government once did, and do so immediately in accord with the Constitution. That is to say that if the Green Party follows the Constitution, and no one else does, that will give it tremendous power because the Constitution by its nature defines what is, and what is not, the United States of America.

One immediate role for the Green Party is providing healthcare. Citizens are forced to accept the overpriced, and downright deadly, healthcare services provided by the hospitals that have been taken over by global capital, hospitals that think only about how to squeeze as much profit as possible out of their victims. Doctors and nurses are treated by the financiers behind the curtains like coal miners under the whip.

The Green Party can organize citizens to take care of their own medical concerns, or those of neighbors, by offering basic, and advanced, training in nutrition, treatment of chronic illnesses, diagnosing and responding to minor conditions, and can even provide sufficient first aid training to handle many serious injuries. Extensive education and training about homeopathic treatments can vastly increase the ability of citizens to care for themselves—and thereby avoid hospitals altogether in most cases.

Organizing citizens to care for each other, and to be responsible to each other, will also help to keep the money in the community; those who grow medicinal herbs or learn critical healing skills, will have stable local jobs unrelated to global finance.

The care for the elderly, the ill, and the very young, can be organized so that neighbors, as members of local cooperatives, provide these services to each other through a barter service and thus assure local employment, and cheaper healthcare, because the parasitic middlemen is cut out.

The party’s role will be to have the vision, the bravery, and the tenacity to get these cooperatives going, and to provide the initial training. The rest will be up to the citizens themselves.

Food is also something the Green Party can help with. The rise in the cost of food engineered by multinationals, and the radical drop in the nutritional value of the food available from supermarkets via corporate vendors, means that people are starving for cheap healthy food.

The party can organize citizens to grow their own organic foods and create systems that provide foodstuff to citizens without paying a penny to the logistics, distribution, and retail middlemen who wrap everything up in plastic while marking up costs. As there are limits to what can be produced locally, the Green Party can organize cooperatives that are capable of negotiating with food suppliers on an economy of scale so as to assure that food is nutritious and prices reasonable.

Education could be a major part of the contribution of the Green Party to the local community.

Education must be seen in the broadest sense of the word. The Green Party can teach citizens how to clean their homes cheaply and effectively without buying commercial products, how to sew and stitch their own clothes, how to make furniture and tools, and how to grow their own food, using organic fertilizers, even in the smallest spaces. Larger tools and machines (saws, washing machines, lawnmowers, even automobiles) can be shared among members of the community thus eliminating duplicate purchases.

All of these efforts will reduce the power of the multinational corporations that fund the corporate political parties and they will give citizens new confidence.

Equally importantly, the Green Party can support local journalism that is run by citizens and that addresses real issues in the community instead of providing the propaganda pushed by advertisers. Such journalism will provide solid local jobs, offer an alternative to the mindless commercial media that is forced on citizens, and provide useful information, and also access to local independent cooperatives that will make Amazon and Walmart obsolete. 

The Green Party can even set up local initiatives to provide energy supplies and transportation at the local level that are independent of the banks and corporations, and the local governments that they control.

Electricity can be generated by citizens in the neighborhood using small windmills and watermills (as was the case before the 1950s), or by solar panels, or even by exercise machines. That energy can be sold, or bartered, to neighbors through local cooperatives without a single penny going to a corporation.

Finally, the Green Party can create an alternative economy that allows for sophisticated barter transactions between citizens using local currencies that are backed by real goods or services—and thus not subject to inflation or corporate manipulation. That effort can even extend to cooperative banks that lend at little, or no, interest to members to provide real economic independence.

Not all these ideas can be immediately realized, but if the Green Party is at the vanguard in advancing them, it will generate a powerful momentum that will shake people out of the stupor of narcissistic consumption and compel, and cajole, them to play their true role as citizens and family members.

These activities may seem alien to operatives in modern political parties who shower in the donations poured down by corporations, but political organizations like the Grange in the 19^th century created powerful opposition to corporations in precisely this manner.

Taking a stand, not winning elections, must be the priority

Winning an election, or qualifying to be put on the ballot using a corrupt and fixed system that is designed to suppress the will of the people in blatant violation of the Constitution, should not a priority for the Green Party.

When Howie Hawkins officially received 0.26% of the popular vote in the 2020 election the message was clear for anyone with eyes or ears. The votes for Hawkins were reduced in the corrupt calculation process from something like 10% (or more), just as votes for Donald Trump were reduced across the country (and so were votes for Joe Biden in certain Republican districts). That “election” was determined by horse-trading between corporations in the final days, not by anything that the man on the ground did.

Does anyone truly in his or her heart that such an essentially anti-democratic system can be altered merely by voting in an election?

The Green Party should not compromise in the slightest in order to get time on commercial TV, in order to maintain good relations with insiders in the Democratic Party who might, or might not, be helpful, or in order to raise money from wealthy individuals who would rather not hear about state crimes.

The Green Party’s only chance of rising to real power is to take on everyone at once, and then to use the truth to expose the unethical nature of any collaboration with a fundamentally criminal political system. That is the moral equivalent of the Declaration of Independence of July 4, 1776, exactly two-hundred and forty-seven years ago today.

That means that the Green Party should embrace the spirit of Declaration of Independence from imperialism, and of Constitution which does not grant political parties the authority to determine policy, and then march bravely forward, perhaps alone at first, but soon to be followed by many.

As Confucius wrote, “The virtuous are never truly isolated; there will always be those nearby who sympathize with their cause.”

If the Green Party is the first political party to call into question the corrupt system based on lobbying, rigged voting systems, and massive payoffs to politicians and government officials from corporations in 150 years, so be it. Ours is not the duty to conform with what the narrow of heart accept as necessary, but rather to push the potential of humanity to the limits of benevolence and justice.

If the Green Party openly challenges the assumption that massive institutional corruption is normal, the logic that state crimes planned by intelligence operatives working for the rich and powerful are no big deal, that act in itself will transform the relationship between citizens and the government.

Nothing will be the same again. The moment the Green Party takes a stand, like the signing of the Declaration of Independence, it will start to make the rules, not follow them (see my post on the Declaration of Independence here). The amount of money in the coffer of the Green Party, even the number of Green Party members, will not be important. After all, it was a grand total of fifty-seven who signed the Declaration of Independence.

If the Green Party calls out the mass criminality of the current day, that will be a “word act.” A word act is ritual expression imbued with tremendous transformative power. For example, when a minister or judge says to a couple, “I pronounce you husband and wife,” he or she does not literally transform the two by magic. Yet, those simple words have the power to completely change the relationship between man and woman for a lifetime. 

The Green Party can pronounce that the United States is a republic and a democracy, as opposed to pretending that it is a republic and a democracy. The difference between the two acts is infinite.

When the Green Party speaks out about institutionalized crime it will transform the United States, create a new unity of mind and spirit, a new consensus among thoughtful citizens, that can realize the potential of mankind, and uncover the potential hidden in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

That transformation cannot be achieved by winning an election with the help of corporate sponsors in a system that is corrupt to the bone—no matter how virtuous the candidate may be.

The question of infiltration

If we are serious about making the Green Party the vital political party in the United States, we cannot shy away from unpleasant facts. That means that we must face the inconvenient truth that party members whisper to each other in the shadows, but avoid discussing in formal settings. I am talking about the problem of infiltration: the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by agents planted in the Green Party with the explicit mission of undermining the political impact of the party.

I do not have any evidence on hand that the ineffectiveness of the Green Party, the mixed messages that issue forward from its top leadership, or the divisive internal conflicts and disputes over policies are the result of infiltration by people who are backed by, or influenced by, private intelligence firms such CASI or Booz Allen Hamilton who work on contract for Homeland Security “counter disinformation” programs requested by the super-rich.

Nevertheless, what I can say with confidence is that if the Green Party is truly free of such agents of influence, it is unique among political parties, let along major think tanks and universities, in the United States.

American civil society is riddled with the agents hired by private intelligence firms whose job is to make sure that nothing is done, that no serious issues are addressed effectively, and that no broad social movement is ever built. Their job is to seed fear and loathing and to promote bland, compromised, and ineffective political leaders. Although there are plenty of these operatives who work for foreign governments as well, the fundamental crisis has to do with class, not nationality.

Removing such elements from the Green Party is a necessary step required to organize a successful movement for the people, and to establish a party for the people, of the people, and by the people.

How to do without having this necessary exercise then degenerate into a witch hunt wherein attention is drawn away from the true perpetrators following that classic ruse from ancient times of the criminal crying out “Stop thief!” is the question that confronts us.  

We will not know the true nature of the classified operational plans behind infiltration of political parties in America for decades, but we can pretty much feel out the contours.

I will not presume to suggest what should be done since that much be decided in a deliberative manner by members of the Green Party.

What I can say is that the first step is to discuss this issue in public and to refer to open-source materials and declassified reports available in the public domain that prove without a doubt that such operations are frequently undertaken (for those who wish to dismiss such explanations as conspiracy theories).

These agents push to weaken the positions of the party regarding topics that are threatening to the rich and powerful, to promote extremist statements by select party members intended to alienate party members, undermine solidarity, and give a negative image to the public, and otherwise to encourage and normalize a progressive sounding, toothless and confused agenda that identifies real threats but offers no road map towards their resolution other than awareness, and therefore does not pose a direct threat to the accumulation of wealth, and the promotion of a class society, in the United States by a handful of the super-rich. 

Above all, the Green Party must recognize that institutional decay in America has reached the point at which we do not have the luxury of waiting another decade for a true political alternative.

(Emanuel’s platform as independent candidate for president is available here)