It is not the use of the internet that matters, it is the expression of traditional left-wing American principles on open systems that is the institutional innovation at work here.
Only just discovered, an analysis of the American left in terms of institution building. Our first quote examines the old and the new left of the 30s and 60s, as representing mass unionising vs. direct mail mobilisation.
The third left, the internet organized and enabled left, is different, and has been catalysed by the Bush experience.
The analysis is by Matt Stoller of the Open Left blog.
Matt Stoller:
1. Old Left and New Left
“In terms of institutions building, there have been two great left-wing movements in the past seventy five years, each of which, in their time, represented the best of America. At the core of the first movement was the mass unionization efforts of the 1930s, which led to the expansion and prosperity of the middle class in the post-WWII era. The second started with the civil right movement in the 1950s, and flowered into the broader movements of the 1960s. The institutions of this era combined to end Jim Crow and the Vietnam war, achieve new rights for women, and pass the first major environmental and consumer safety laws since the turn of the century. These two groups are sometimes referred to as the Old Left and the New Left, respectively.”
2. The third Open Left
“The catalytic Presidency of George W. Bush and the conservative movement that put him in power has created the third great movement in left-wing politics, which we call the Open Left. This is a movement of tools and technology, but more than that it is a movement of changed cultural relationships. Many of us saw the Democratic Party leadership fail in 1998 with impeachment, in 2000 with the recount, in 2002 with Iraq, and in 2004 with the Kerry campaign. We concluded that it was not just a stronger Democratic party we needed, it was a new set of ideas to animate our political structures. Fortunately, those ideas existed on the internet, the cultural medium in popular use at the time of these failures. And so the Open Left came into being, built on the internet and in response to the excesses of the modern right, the limits of the institutional left, and the learned apathy of much of the public.
Politics today works much differently than it did only ten years ago. In 1997, the politics of siloed special interests reigned supremeMoveon, the first Open Left group, does not have the same relationship with its members that Common Cause does, or that the United Autoworkers does. The UAW is central to the economic welfare of its members, and Common Cause has a Federated mass membership structure dependent on regular direct mail fundraising. Moveon’s credibility, by contrast, comes from the willingness of 3 million people to open and read their email, and to sometimes take actions based on the recommendation of Moveon’s leadership. This makes Moveon much more responsive to their members, much lower cost and much more flexible, but also less of a clear and direct presence in their members’ lives.
This isn’t just true of Moveon, of course. Blogs, Drinking Liberally, Step it Up, Freepress – in fact all mass political organizations built in the last ten years share these characteristics. Political power is more and more situated in far-flung networks that can be activated and deactivated quickly, and the new millennial generation that will be the political backbone for the new progressive America likes it this way.
At OpenLeft.com, we are going to explore these new dynamics. We don’t believe the internet changes everything, or that older institutions are irrelevant. Far from it. We think that any institution can succeed in building the new America we see unfolding in sketches on the internet. We see the internet and the Open Left as a sort of operating system for a new political system, where groups can plug in and form coalitions more easily and effective on the left, and we see a strong set of dynamics pulling us into this new coalition-focused direction. We hope to host many of these groups, serving as a forum for strategic discussion of goals and tactics.
We want to explore various characteristics of Open Left politics. Identity, including race, notions of the ‘creative class’, and religiosity are at the root of our changing political dynamics. New Economy companies such as Google and sustainable energy businesses are a part of these emerging coalitions, and extractive industries are set against us. And there is an international element to the Open Left, as this movement is global in nature, though we will mostly explore the American component.”
3. Why Open Left? Why not just netroots?
“Good question. We’ve never been comfortable with the term ‘netroots’. It’s a term without a coherent meaning, sometimes pointing to liberals that organize in online communities, sometimes meaning anyone online who does so. This term doesn’t describe who we are, because there is no divide between online and offline at this point; insiders use email and blogs, and outsider activists run campaigns and have in-person conferences. The term ‘Open Left’ is a much wider and more descriptive way of understanding the larger political dynamics at play. It is not the use of the internet that matters, it is the expression of traditional left-wing American principles on open systems that is the institutional innovation at work here.
This has been a long time coming. The internet itself expresses certain values that go back to very early American philosophers, and its communal and networked structure combined with its rampant capacity for individualism is uniquely situated for our moment in history. The third important left wing movement in modern American history is nearly ten years old, it’s time we recognize what’s going on.
Thus, OpenLeft.com.”