[Marxism] Green Party US on the edge?

[Mark Lause]

Look, there have been times when, if I had moved across the river
here, I would have constituted the Green Party of Kentucky.
(Certainly true in terms of Tennessee and Alabama, espectially when
the universities haven't been in session.)  And, regardless of the
fact that the party would have really had no resident adherents
outside of my household, the GPUS would have accorded me so much
representation at the national convention and on national committees
that I'd had to have drafted my dogs and cats to fill all of them.

In 2004, this part of Ohio had more delegates to the national
convention than it had active Greens in the area, so it had to draft a
Reform Party person to serve as a Cincinnati delegate.  And they voted
alongside people who were elected by real organizations, often with
sizable constituencies.

The problem is not to say that representation for each state party is
the same as the state gets in the electoral college, but they are
proportional to each other as though the delegates to a convention
have roughly the same standing as their states to other states.  As is
the case with the Electoral College.

This is precisely how and why parties like the Populists imploded.
These third parties desperately want to be national and are always
eager to get some kind of representation by states that they really
don't have very organized.  The result virtually extends an open
invitation to people representing almost nothing in terms of members
but eager to set themselves up as power brokers.

In the end, the fact that the GPUS is not a membership body IS the
problem.  That you can have thousands of engaged Greens in one state
outvoted by, say, delegations representing almost nobody is THE great
glaring contradiction for any organization based on "democratic
values."

Solidarity!
Mark L.