Groups and Coalitions: Politics Chapter V

Previous: Identity

(Introduction and Table of Contents)

Politically active groups form because of ideology and identity: they have beliefs about how the world should be; those beliefs are emotional and create both identification with other people who have the beliefs and shared desire to change the world or keep the world in line with the ideology’s prescriptions.

Identification is necessary, but without ideology there would be no direction: a group wouldn’t know who should rule or what they should do. Should we convert everyone to our religion and dis-empower or even kill those who espouse the wrong way to know and worship God? Or alternatively, is religion something which should be kept separate from politics? Should we elect our leaders, or should they be the sons of those who had power before? Who should be allowed to be a leader? Men only? Property holders only? Members of the aristocracy? Religious officials? Once in power should they try to make everyone equal and help those in need, or should they work to keep power and wealth only in the hands of those worthy of it, like the nobility?

Should you be able to buy land on the market? For much of history almost all land could not be bought. Should people buy their goods in the market, or make it themselves as part of group activities and distribute it based on something other than money? Again, for most of history, most good goods, including food and housing, have not been sold for money.

And so on. Ideology is the content of what any group wants. You can see it today in the differences between conservatives, liberals, socialists, identity politics, social democracy, fascism, and so on.

The power of groups is multiplied by their organization and their self-identification. An isolated union has only a small amount of power, but if there are many unions and they won’t cross strike lines and will support strikes, all of them become much more powerful. When unions make up almost half of all workers, as was the case in most Western countries in the 50s thru 70s, they are obviously more powerful than when they make up under 20% as is the case in many countries today.

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The more cohesive a group is ideologically, the more power they have. This means agreement on goals and methods. If some union members are willing to cross strike lines, unions are weak. If almost all unions or almost everyone in a major political party agree that women should or shouldn’t be able to work, feminism is far more powerful or far weaker than if a group is split on the issue.

If a group is split ideologically on important issues, in fact, it really isn’t a group; it’s a coalition: groups work together when they agree or don’t agree; coalitions and alliances work together only on specific goals they hold in common.

Just because there is disagreement, however, doesn’t make a group a coalition: if group members disagree but once a decision is made will pull together for a goal anyway, they’re still a group, at least politically. If, on the other hand, they will work against each other, they’re a coalition. You saw this in the 1972 American election, where powerful liberals inside the Democratic party actually worked against the party nominee, George McGovern^, because they disagreed with what they considered his radical agenda. To him them, McGovern wasn’t a legitimate candidate, he didn’t believe the right things, therefore he wasn’t a “real Democrat” and opposing him was fine. As a result, McGovern lost to Nixon and that split can be seen to presage the loss of the Democratic party’s status as the ruling party of American politics in 1980, which lead to the Republicans taking power, and the new ideology of neoliberalism becoming the hegemonic ideology of not just America, but of the West in general.

Small groups and homogenous groups; groups whose members have many similar characteristics are easier to keep coherent and to organize. As a result, elite factions are always powerful, not just because they have more money or power in the current system, but just because they are small and members have so much in common, they coordinate with one another easily.

You can see this fairly clearly in both Britain and the United States, where elites tend to go to the same private schools and then the same universities: the Ivy League and a few small private liberal colleges in the US, and Oxford and Cambridge in Britain. Elites in both country were raised and educated together in very similar fashion and they know each other personally. It is no wonder they can act together to create a world in line with their ideology and perceived interests. (Remember that perceived interests are based on ideology.)

Even small groups that aren’t elite, but are homogeneous and organized can punch well above their weight. In America think of New York’s orthodox Jews, or Miami’s Cuban exiles: they are solid voting blocs and are pandered to, because they can deliver votes and resources, including money.

At some points such groups included medieval guilds, unions, Masons and other fraternal societies, and Indian Zoroastrians (the Parsi) and so on.

Marxists emphasize class, but classes often aren’t political groups. Marxists who talk about class consciousness recognize this: a class (industrial workers) is only a political group when they identify with each other and have a common ideology, and they are only an effective political group when they have some form of organization, as was the case with unions from the mid 19^th century. American farmers up until World War II organized not just thru political parties, but through fraternal (and in some cases sororal) lodges which had vast power and could mobilize money, political workers and voters.

The most effective groups are all what are known as mobilized groups: they are conscious of themselves as groups, have shared identity and ideology and have some form of organization, whether formal or informal.

Often enough people’s political groupings are not horizontal: not class based class-based, but based on vertical alignment. Married women are more conservative than unmarried because they vote with their husband, who they identify with and who is often the primary provider: what is good for him is good for them. People may want what is good for their industry, and so oil workers may vote the same as their bosses: the vertical ties to their superiors is are more important than the horizontal tie to workers in other fields.

In everyday life, a workers who wants to be promoted finds their closest competition isn’t the boss, it’s their co-workers, who they must “beat” to impress the boss. Workers cohere together, in part, when they see that most of them won’t be getting promoted and that their best chance for a raise isn’t to beat other workers, but to beat the bosses.

Such perceived interest is two-way: it is informed by ideology and identity, but it also informs identity and ideology. Movement of individuals between self-perceived groups and changes of ideology and identity happens. In a society with multiple ideologies, identities and political groups, it can only take a relatively small shift to shift the ruling ideology. In 1980 so-called “Reagan Democrats” gave Reagan his margin of victory, just as in 72 anti-McGovern democrats gave the election to Nixon. In neither case did most Democrats shift, just a minority.

Since the Reagan Democrats had changed their ideology, however, they became a permanent vote for neoliberalism, and to get some back Bill Clinton himself became a neoliberal. Such shifts are part of the causal chain of ideological shifts.

But, without the oil shocks, inflation and high unemployment of the 70s: without it being seen for over a decade that post-war liberalism was failing to deliver on core promises, there wouldn’t have been enough Reagan Democrats to flip the sub-ideology.

Coalitions of groups are most effective when they have the policy of war allies: no separate peace. In such situations, groups in a coalition won’t cut ^side-deals that go against their allies core interests of their allies.

In the US, as of this writing, the Republican party could be seen ^as an alliance between traditional fiscal/corporate conservatives, libertarians and conservative “populists”. They vote together and can rarely be broken apart: they rarely make a separate peace with Democrats. The Democratic party, however, has some neoliberals who will make separate peace, and since the Senate is 50-50, that means Biden can’t pass his agenda since he can’t hold all 50 votes, while Republican leader Mitch McConnell can hold all 50 of his votes.

This is to a large extent based on legitimacy: to neoliberals doing left wing things like give poor people money and fighting climate change isn’t legitimate: it’s not how government should act. Left-wingers shouldn’t be in power, they aren’t the right type of people, and the policies they want are just wrong. It’s OK to stop them.

The Democratic party itself is at best lukewarm to progressives: Bernie Sanders, who ran for the nomination was an independent, and while independents preferred him, registered Democrats did not. The split in the party is real, and to neoliberals left-wingers don’t have legitimacy.

But many of the ideas that progressives push are just what would have been mainstream during the New Deal and post-War liberal periods: the ruling ideology has changed, and along with it legitimacy and with those shifts so also has changed which party is dominant, and how strong the internal alliances within the parties are. (These shifts happened over time, there used to be more members of both parties willing to vote for the other side’s agenda.)

What caused the change in ideology and identity and legitimacy, cascading to groups and then to government control was in large part a change in the environment. Not just oil shocks, but much more.

All ideologies are influenced by their environment, and it is thus environment to which we turn next.

Next: Political Environment

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