Can the Greens and Libertarians strike a “Grand Bargain of The Radical Fringe”?
How far apart are the programmatic differences between the Libertarian Party, typically characterized as far Right, and the Green Party, typically characterized as far Left? Could these two parties, the largest formation of what we could call the radical fringe of American politics overcome their philosophical differences and present a united front against the Washington consensus by creating a unified platform?
With the overwhelming majority of the voting population in this election cycle clearly expressing a distaste for the nominees of either of the two major parties, but lacking any realistic alternative to them, this is a question those who see in electoral politics a means for radical change just might want to consider. The closest thing advocates of radical political change have to an alternative to the two fascist parties are radical fringe parties, Libertarians and Greens, who alone have been unable to break through the clutter of lesser-evilism.
To be sure, I do not want to overstate the extent to which these two parties break with the conceptual political framework of existing fascist parties: to put these two parties in some perspective, in comparison to the Marxist and anarchist varieties of communism, the Libertarians don’t go so far as to call for the complete abolition of the existing state; while the Greens don’t go so far as to demand the complete abolition of private property. Both parties implicitly or explicitly accept the continuation of these fundamental categories of bourgeois society. The Greens and Libertarians are radical in relation to the two big fascist parties, but fall well short of a complete break with the assumptions of those parties — they compose a radical fringe of bourgeois politics, not its abolition.
Still within the limits of bourgeois politics, can these parties together accomplish what neither of them has been able to accomplish on their own — break through the clutter of two party politics?