[Marxism] Green Party US on the edge?

[Craig Brozefsky]

"Mark Lause" <markalause at gmail.com> writes:

> I am an active Green and remain such.  The implication that I'm one
> of those carping critics of the GPUS speculating lustfully about its
> demise is simply wrong..

I'm very sorry if my closing comment implied you were one of those
"carping critics".  My intent was not to attack you, but to gripe a
bit about how dramatic speculation tends to overshadow the tasks at
hand.  I am afraid I was projecting a bit of a transient local
situation onto this conversation.  I certainly do not view you in that
negative light.

> Also wrong is your misunderstanding of my statement that the GPUS
> "equates" parties for representation with some idea that I'm saying
> the state parties are represented equally.
>
> How you see this as something to do with whether a party is
> officially registered or not within the state is not onty wrong but
> incomprehensibly wrong.

It is not an issue of the party being "registered" but of it's members
being registered.  In California and other states I can register as a
Green when I register to vote.  In Illinois I do not, and any party
affiliation is determined by which primary ballot I pull in that
election cycle.  In other states there is no way to pull a green
ballot or register.  In those states, and still in Illinois since Feb
5th was our first state run primary, membership is defined by joining
the party directly and paying dues.  The barrier and cost of
membership is different in these situations.  There is no nationwide,
consistent definition of membership.

Such details are important when your national party is a federation of
state parties to which the membership relates to directly.  I am not a
GPUS member, I am an Illinois Green Party member.  My relation is with
the ILGP, not the GPUS directly.  The ILGP has affiliated with the
GPUS.

> The GPUS' system of representation "equates" state parties to their
> standing within the general electoral college system.

No it doesn't.  Membership (with a definition that covers the various
conditions of the state parties), State Voting Strength, Campaign
strength, and Presidential Voting strength are the factors.  These
other factors are including to help mitigate the restrictive ballot
access laws in many states.  Even then, many still feel that parties
from registration states are over-represented.  The following URL is
the proposal that passed, and has links to the allocation formula:

<http://gp.org/cgi-bin/vote/propdetail?pid=336>

> This is the way the major parties work and the GPUS (like many of
> its predecessors) opts to go down that route as well.  The problem
> is that the GPUS has ENGAGED MEMBERSHIP in the thousands in some
> states and next to nothing in other states.

The GPUS has NO individual membership, it's membership consists of
State Green Parties, not individuals.

> Specifically, California and New York have large organizations.  Ohio,
> where I am, is a rather contented little group with a four-digit claim
> of membership based on who's signed up at the website.  But meetings
> are tiny and almost all the important decisions statewide are made by
> people who'd fit into a freight elevator.  And let's not get into
> Kentucky and some of the states to our south.  Having all of these
> states get to represent what their states have in the electoral
> college (or some variation on population) is innately undemocratic.

This is incorrect, the representation at the national nominating
convention is NOT based on US electoral collage allocations.
Population size does play a role, but it is one of several factors.
My comments on why Maine has such a high number of delegates
considering it's size and population may have mislead you.  The
formula is here:

http://green.gpus.org/cgi-bin/vote/propdetail?pid=272

> More than this, that representation problem within the GPUS is
> characteristic of a lot of historic third party movements and has
> been precisely what has led to the downfall of a number of them.
> Anyone with any realization of this is rather duty bound to say so,
> right?

Well, considering the new information above, do you still see this as
a "representation problem"?

If there is a problem here, it is not in the specific formula of
represenation at the national nominating convention, but in the
difficulties of buildinf a national movement that is engaging an
electoral process that is fragmented at the state level.  This
reality, as well as the demographic realities of the United States, is
what leads to the state parties having differing forms, decision
making processes, and notions of individual membership.  This is also
why the GPUS is a federation of parties, and not a national party with
individual members.

There is an obvious difference in opinion between Illinois and
California for example.  Illinois went heavily for McKinney, but
California went heavily for Nader.  The sociological forces that led
to this difference are what we have to keep an eye on, not the details
of the delegate allocation process.

-- 
Sincerely, Craig Brozefsky <craig at red-bean.com>