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Changing the Powers That Be: How the Left Can Stop Losing and Win

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Domhoff has been researching and writing on the power elite for over 30 years -- his books include "The Powers That Be" and "Who Rules America." Now, for the first time, he turns to the question of strategy for progressives. How can we "change the powers that be"?

The audience for the book is the Left. This requires some explanation, given that if you watch Fox News you are led to believe that the Democratic Party is the Far Left. Nonsense! Most Democratic leaders and voters are moderate or liberal. The Left, which Domhoff prefers to call "egalitarians," is barely represented by the Democrats. Those who supported Nader and/or the Greens, those who agree with Noam Chomsky, Michael Moore, Barbara Ehrenreich -- that's the Left. Much bigger than many people think, but not all "liberals" by any means. Democratic socialists, or social democrats, which Domhoff reframes as egalitarians -- a group to really scare the Dittoheads and O'Reillyoids.

What are egalitarians to do given the current dismal situation? The event that spurred Domhoff to write it was the 2000 election. He opens the book with a counterfactual scenario -- what if Nader had run in the Democratic primaries instead of as a Green? It seems quite likely that Gore might have won, and the Democratic party would also be more progressive. Now that we know that Bush was no moderate/conservative after all, but rather a right-wing fanatic, this clearly would have been decisively better, if far from perfect. But Domhoff's whole point is that the Left has to stop making the perfect the enemy of the good if it's going to start winning. The unfortunate reality is that until the electoral rules are changed, a third party has a good chance of being nothing more than a spoiler, as the Greens were in 2000. If the Left doesn't wise up to this, Bush and the Republicans will be the only ones to benefit.

The strategy is an inside/outside strategy, working from within the Democratic party to push it in a progressive direction just as the Christian conservatives have moved the Republicans to the right since Reagan was first elected. Domhoff calls for the formation of Egalitarian Democratic Clubs within the Democratic Party in order to build a permanent organizational infrastructure, rather than just supporting the centrists. Of course the movements (global justice, anti-sweatshop, living wage, anti-war, feminist, anti-racist, LGBT rights, etc) continue to organize and pressure the Dems from the outside as well.

This may sound like nothing new. It's not, but it is sure timely if the Left is to play a constructive role in 2004! The bulk of the book is devoted to what Domhoff sees as necessary changes in the Left's agenda, and much of this is aimed at the tiny remaining Marxist left, so it may not be as relevant to many readers. Domhoff's points include: 1) forget central state planning and focus on equitably regulated markets, 2)promote strategic non-violence -- note to Black Blocs!, 3) make room in the coalition for individuals who are wealthy capitalists -- some are quite progressive!, 4) realize the hierarchical tendency and promote decentralized organization -- note to followers of Big Leaders such as Nader!, 5) drop the blanket opposition to military intervention and support humanitarian intervention -- controversial with many!, 6) drop militant secularism -- many religious activists are very progressive, 7) stop blaming the media and develop an effective egalitarian movement.

Personally, I'm convinced that Domhoff has nailed it. If the Left rallies around the strategy outlined here, its ratio of success to failure will go up dramatically. Other recent books worth consulting for complementary views on Left unity are Todd Gitlin's "Twilight of Common Dreams" and Richard Rorty's "Achieving Our Country."

With Ralph Nader expected to announce whether he will run for President this time around, I (an unrepentant Nader 2000 supporter) think this book constitutes the strongest argument I have seen for why he should not.

Domhoff's 108-page book is put together with the precision of poetry, and I hesitate to summarize it. It has convinced me of a number of things, including that I should call myself an egalitarian rather than a progressive and that we egalitarians should form Egalitarian Democratic Clubs within the Democratic Party. With regard to Nader, it has convinced me that his third-party campaign in 2000 was misguided and that he should not attempt one now.

It is only very reluctantly that I can be convinced to blame Al Gore's loss on Nader. My reasons for arguing otherwise have long included that Gore did not lose but only came close enough to losing to have the election stolen, that Gore came close to losing because he was a terrible candidate who, among other things, ignored the need to appeal to Nader's supporters, and that many of Nader's supporters were new voters who might have voted for no one had he not been on the ballot.

But the facts remain that Nader won more votes than the difference between Gore and Bush in more than one state, that Nader's predictions regarding Bush have proved disastrously wrong, and that Nader and his staffers made comments suggesting that defeating Gore was his intention (Domhoff cites a March 4, 2001, Philadelphia Inquirer article).

I have often been saddened to see egalitarians express more anger toward Nader than toward Bush. But the case Domhoff makes is one for building coalitions and preventing infighting. Domhoff suggests that had Nader run in the 2000 Democratic primaries and lost graciously, he could have significantly influenced Gore, helped Gore win, and begun the necessary task of reforming the Democratic Party. Domhoff offers arguments drawing on the history of political parties in many countries to make a compelling case that reforming the Democratic party is much more likely to succeed than creating a powerful third party in the United States.

Domhoff points out that most of Nader's examples of cases in which third parties have influenced the US political agenda come from the nineteenth century, before the use of state primaries, which "have been the main source of new programs since World War I."

Domhoff suggests that Nader might have won between 5 and 25 percent of the vote in every Democratic primary in 2000. That might be right. But I'm not sure he isn't overestimating voters' understanding of the system. Domhoff makes a strong case that public citizen number one, Ralph Nader, lacks a basic understanding of what is possible in our political system. Yet he assumes that Democratic primary voters understand the difference between a primary and a general election.

If that were the case, where would "momentum" come from? Why would voters be backing centrist candidates more as their votes become less necessary for victory? Why would people who support Dennis Kucinich's platform (which is quite similar to Nader's) and who believe Kucinich would be the strongest candidate against Bush choose to back Kerry in a primary based on his "electability"? It seems to me possible that Nader would have ended up with totals as a Democrat not too much higher than what he got running as a Green.

I could be underestimating, however, if the 2000 experience is - as seems possible - a major cause of 2004 primary voters' passion for and confusion over "electability." Jesse Jackson did not face the same nonsensical spoiler arguments in primaries that have been faced by Kucinich and Al Sharpton. If this misuse of a general election spoiler argument in a primary is a new phenomenon, the question of whether it will last seems critical.

Domhoff's book is not entirely about Nader. He uses Nader's campaign as a jumping off point for laying out a program for egalitarian politics. Domhoff proposes establishing egalitarian Democratic clubs (EDCs) to "lay the basis for the future takeover of the party in the same way liberals [took over] the California state party with their California democratic clubs in the 1950s." It would have been helpful for him to elaborate on how exactly to start these clubs.

But Domhoff does offer powerful insights into American politics and a general guide to what sort of movement is needed going forward. He advocates reframing "progressive" or "working class" struggles as "egalitarian" in order to be more descriptive and inclusive.

Domhoff also argues for a politics based on a market economy rather than "central planning." I think his notion that egalitarians lean toward promoting central planning is overstated if he means by it much more than the several cases in which he himself says non-market solutions work best. But Domhoff makes an excellent point that "research shows that markets need guidance from government to operate well, and that there is no inevitable trade-off between equality and efficiency, or between equality and freedom, within a market system. More equality might even mean more efficiency, not less, and it can certainly mean more freedom for more people." Promoting understanding of this point could work wonders to reverse policies that benefit only the wealthy but which others support in hopes of trickle-down effects.

One point that I wonder about in Domhoff's discussion of the economy is his support for the Earned Income Tax Credit. Later in the book he praises the Living Wage Movement for, among other things, working through the market, but here he seems to suggest that an ideal solution to poverty is for the government to make up the difference between the poverty wages companies pay and a living wage. This seems to place central planning ahead of market strategies unnecessarily, and in the process to risk discouraging work as well as disheartening workers.

The insightful analyses and practical strategies presented in Domhoff's compact, highly readable book offer a promising blueprint for reinvigorating the political Left. A compelling blend of realism and idealism, "Changing the Powers That Be" is strongly recommended for anyone needing plausible hope for a more just, egalitarian American society--and an achievable plan for its realization.

G. William Domhoff attempts to identify the mistakes of the U.S. Left and proposes a strategy that he believes would lead to greater progressive influence and political success in his new book, "Changing the Powers That Be".
The suggested winnining strategies are not novel and have been used by certain sectors of the Left with positive results; unfortunately, according to Domhoff, many "egalitarians" (a term he prefers over "progressive" or "socialist") undermine their efforts by persisting in errors which stem from dated theories and left-wing mythologies.

Professor Domhoff makes many compelling arguments that merit close attention from those searching to clear new avenues for the Left; however, the book does not address important concerns that many U.S. progressives would have in implementing the program. This is particularly true regarding his proposal that Leftists enter the Democratic Party. Furthermore, the Professor ignores the complexities of implementing his ideas in a neo-liberal, "post-fordist" United States; there is no mention of globalization and more than once while reading the book, it occured to me that Domhoff felt a certain nostalgia for fordism and that he verged on breaking into song over the New Deal and F.D.R. In fact, Domhoff's program contains a series of liberal "pis-allers".

Now such nostalgia over the liberal welfare state is problematic
in the context of globalization. Corporations and financial institutions can transfer money and jobs fairly fast these days.
One can imagine a great deal of demagogery created by the Right when the Left tries to pass laws to make liberal reforms. We would see a hastened capital flight from this country. I am not saying that demanding such reforms is wrong; I am saying that Professor Domhoff's vision is short-sighted in this regard and
he does not touch on the issue of the need for a global struggle against capital and, with the exception of advocating non-violent demonstrations, his strategy is pretty much limited to making political changes through the ballot box.

The book does, at least obliquely, grapple with a key question for the Left: are we strong enough to fight for more radical changes now, or is it better to set our sights on a short term goal of some minor reforms, and thereby strengthen the Left so that it can launch more ambitious struggles in the future? It is a question worth pondering. The only problem is that Domhoff's vision is one of simply reforming capitalism through an alliance with Liberals, not getting rid of it at any time in the future.

Domhoff's chapter on markets is provocative, if schematic; the chapter on keeping leaders accountable is sublime. The section on foreign policy stinks.

Bill Domhoff has spent his career trying to figure out how America really works. Unlike other scholars, he's never been satisfied with just a good story -- he's always been eager to put different theories to test and figure out which is really right. In this book, he uses that lifetime of knowledge to answer a crucial question for anyone who wants a better world: how do we make a difference in politics.

I thought I knew a lot about this subject -- and indeed, he ends up coming to the same basic conclusion I did -- but Domhoff challenges some of the basic assumptions of the left, including that the biased media is a practical problem.

For those who want to take a look, much of the book is available from Domhoff's website at [...]

William Domhoff has some crisp advice for the left (or 'egalitarians'). Don't bother with third parties. Avoid any sort of violent protest. Forget attempting to suppress the market ('socialism'). I have mixed feelings about this. I don't have a major quarrel with these pieces of advice (his critique of Nader is excellent). I don't even disagree with much of his secondary words of wisdom--stop dwelling on the failures of the media, don't bash religion. But the spirit of the text is a serious problem. Domhoff seems to believe that if only egalitarians would clearly isolate those who make the mistakes above, everything would be hunky dory. He frequently claims this is the conclusion of 'social science'. Yet the only times in the last century the left seemed to gather any power (the thirties and the sixties), the boundaries between liberals and radicals were at their weakest. Comparisons with other countries don't bear out Domhoff's conclusions. For example, he claims the US left was gathering steam in the late nineties until the Nader campaign, and the supposed failure to denounce violence at the Seattle protests derailed it. Yet the French left made near identical mistakes--making a poor electoral choice that left Chirac in a runoff with the far right, rather than the left, and engaging in more visibly violent protests than anything in the US (recall the bulldozer and McDonald's) but it has become stronger, successfully spearheading the campaign against the EU constitution. And some of Domhoff's advice is not so good. Its hard to believe that he thinks constantly denouncing and trying to isolate Republicans would have a similar impact to denunciations of racists by the civil rights movement, particularly given that he is clear the US is stuck with a two party system. Far from leading to an expanding coalition prepared to push the far right out of the public sphere, as happened in the earlier case, this would merely heighten the tensions in the country, as the Republicans (who represent slightly more than 50% of the electorate) would engage in a similar campaign. He also dismisses unions, and offers no other plausible mass base for an egalitarian project. Although he at times mocks the new left of the sixties for trying to get close to circles of power and agitate towards them, he seems to believe in a similar strategy, fawning over rich men who have shown some vague progressive sympathies (Corzine, Soros). Perhaps since he doesn't seem to believe in mass politics, he has nothing to say about problems of racial segregation in the egalitarian movement. His alternative to state socialism is a watery call to 'plan through the market', without any real thought to wrenching economic enterprises out of the hands of the elites whose power he has documented well elsewhere. Finally, his claims that critiques of US imperialism are old hat has not dated well, to say the least. Still, the book overall is as a clear statement as you will find of progressive (not liberal, not hard left) principles.