Green Party — decentralization or disorganization?

I have, in my critique of the Green Party's Ten Key Values and elsewhere, said that one of my main problems with the party is the "decentralization" plank.

That's regardless of different interpretations of what the plank means.

That said, though, many Greens seem to take a maximalist view of the plank. As in, a maximalist interpretation of how much decentralization it allows.

Besides ixnaying the potential for robust federal government action on thing like climate change, if there ever were a Green president and she or he took such a view of decentralization, within the party, it causes other problems.

In essence, it allows various state parties to become private fiefdoms. As I've said before, many, from what I see, are like the old British version of rotten or pocket boroughs in the Commons 200 years ago.

And finally, at The North Star, somebody totally gets it! Although I don't agree with all of his digressions into Marxist theory, and the piece is in general a long read indeed, on organizational issues, Andrew Stewart is spot-on.

Start with this:

We essentially have a situation now where there is an organization in Washington DC that calls itself the Green Party of the United States and carries on with pretenses of being a national presence but which in reality is just one of multiple individual state parties that have absolutely no de facto coordination mechanisms with a central authority and other parties. It is possible for sister parties to communicate via email forums but the structure of decentralized democracy makes decision making far different than the style of previous Left political parties.

Bingo. (Emphasis mine.) 

The Green Party US, as in the national party, is nothing more than another state party. And, things like this contribute to the national party having various pants-crappings. (Stewart is very much with me in his take on David Cobb and the AccommoGreens.)

Several things from Stewart.

It's a pretense that it's a national party. And probably, that pretense is another thing connected to the GPUS/GPUSA split.

Second, no coordination. So, if the national party won't pay for Jill Stein's AccommoGreens recount, she'll get a state party to back her.

Third, no central authority.

Greens have a clear object lesson (besides the current state of the national party) when you have something that (allegedly, in this case) has no central authority.

The Occupy movement.

It, too, got jack shit done.

Or, to look back at the last election, per Tom MacMillan? The Oklahoma Green Party, going beyond Stein's personal endorsement of him before the California Democratic primary, formally endorsed Bernie Sanders. Before that state's OWN primary. As in "We're Greens, declaring ourselves irrelevant. And stupid."

The party claimed it was due to the state's repressive ballot access laws. Bullshit, multiple times. First, they can't be more repressive than Texas, can they? Second, surely, you can have a caucus and convention if you can't have a primary. Third, if you couldn't do that, you still don't need to endorse one Dem over another.

Per MacMillan and along that line, Colorado Greens, in a state that should be more sympatico to a Green Party than Oklahoma, were arguably even worse. And, they didn't like Tom calling them about. But, contra Andrea Merida Cuellar and others, and their link, he was right (or more right than wrong) and they were wrong (or more wrong than right). Writing 1,000 words about the Colorado Democratic presidential caucus and how Berniecrats were running out of hope and how they could consider jumping ship after hope was exhausted?

To coin a phrase? That is "lesser evilism" at work.

At a minimum, one could write a Green Party state-level appeal to Sandernistas without an in-the-weeds, inside-baseball 500-word section about how the Colorado Democratic presidential caucus operates.

Beyond that, for me, I would have mentioned foreign policy issues in that appeal and said something like: "If you really oppose American imperialism, the Green Party is the only choice." In other words, tell them to start voting Green now, ignore the Democratic Presidential caucus and move on because — Bernie is a Democrat. (And he is, in reality.)

I'm not sure the Colorado Greens were as off-base as MacMillan claims, but, if that link is the best defense they can offer, they were at least a bit off-base.

(Note: This is not in any way a taking of sides in the Cuellar vs Cobb-Stein events at this year's GP national convention.)

And, per a comment Stewart had on MacMillan's piece? Occupy was probably not much more than left-neoliberal, and selfish graduate-school whites, as self-polling indicated, and I blogged about.

That said, I disagree with MacMillan in condemning fusion candidates, period. I'd cross-endorse a Dem IF they checked all major lefty check boxes.

That said, back to Stewart's main piece. This:

The Green Party needs to actualize itself as a national party by suborning the multiple state parties to the Green Party of the United States.

Is the bottom line.

I doubt it will happen in or by 2020.

Which means I move closer yet to either the Socialist Party USA or not voting.