542
BAYARD RUSTIN
conflicts of the twentieth century, especially as reapportionment pro–
ceeds. Under the pressure of these developments, it is likely that the
present consensus Democratic party under Johnson will tum out to
be
a step on the road toward a realignment of the major parties resulting
in their more nearly approximating certain Western European models.
That is, one party
will
range from conservative to liberal, the other
from liberal to radical.
Such a transformation, or modernization of our political party
structure is not preordained, and I do not posit it as a matter of
doctrinaire inevitability. It is a tendency, one evidence of which was
the partial routing of the Dixiecrats by the MFDP of Atlantic
City.
Flushing the racists out of the Democratic party is a step toward
making that party an instrument responsive to radical demands. It
strengthens the liberals' position vis-a.-vis the machines and conserva–
tive economic interests at a time when the Administration's legislative
reform program will have completed its first stage and when more
fundamental approaches to the nation's social and economic ills
will
be on the political agenda.
Assuming such a realignment does not take place, that instead
the forces for change group themselves into a third party, doesn't the
power of that party also rest on the coalition I have described? I sense
that there is an understanding among the new radicals that the coali–
tion will
in
fact be the basis for either perspective-or for any long–
range political progress. They simply assume that the coalition is
immortal, that they can fight it, obstruct it, assail its proponents and
organize against it, but that it will be there waiting for them when
they decide the time has come for joining it. The reality is that the
coalition must
be
constantly renewed in activity; a political movement
must
be
built consciously with an awareness of its purposes and
limitations at each stage of its development.
I argue for coalition politics not because it exhausts the radical
vision of society but because it exhausts the possibilities for basic
change actually open to us now. Only by acting through these
p0s–
sibilities now do we lay the foundation for relevant radicalism. The
"pessimism" of people like Nat Hentoff, leads one to wonder whether,
when they say "not now," they mean "never."
