(Originally published in Greater Democracy)

The Activist Tech group is organizing several interesting panels for the SXSW Interactive Conference is March 11-15. One is entitled, “Are Political Parties Obsolete?” and asks the questions, “If we can form and sustain coalitions around issues in a more distributed way, without centralized organization around ideology, do we really need political parties?”

One of the panel members is Adam Werbach, former head of the Sierra Club, and a moving force behind the November 3rd Theses, calling for meaningful reforms in the Democratic Party. It will be very interesting to hear his comments.

Over on Maxed Out Mama, she discusses a thread at the Democratic Underground by people trying to decide if they should be a Democrat or a moderate Republican.

Being fan of emerging self-organizing systems (for example, check out Steven Johnson’s book Emergence), my inclination might be towards moving away from political parties. The structure of parties can inhibit emergent self-organizing systems.

There is a problem with this. Many of the electoral laws across the country are written promote the two party system, and if we are going to move away from political parties, a lot of electoral law needs to be changed.

However, this set of gripes about the Democratic Party has an interesting comment that makes me think about things from a slightly different perspective. My friend wrote, “The Democratic Party isn’t something to which I can belong. I may register as a Democrat, but at least my public library gives me a card. My PTA sends out a newsletter. I get a team shirt for bowling. And those are just the tangible tokens of membership. The Democratic Party doesn’t foster loyalty. And it should. It’s a measure of organizational health.”

I think there is something very important here. If you ask many people if they are a Democrat, they may reply yes. They vote for Democrats. They are registered as Democrats, so they will reply, yes they are Democrats. However, if you ask them if they are a member of the Democratic Party, many of the same people will reply that no, they are not.

Much of my interest in emerging self-organizing systems is predicated on the idea of a certain level of cohesiveness of the organization. While it may be possible to have a cohesive organization without a strong concept of membership, a feeling of membership is very important to any cohesive organization, and is also, I believe, a very important human need.

So, are political parties obsolete? I don’t think so. I think they can serve an important role in connecting people, building community, and providing a sense of membership. Meetup does a good job of connecting people and builds community. The Democratic Party hasn’t done a good job of it, so perhaps the question ultimately isn’t whether political parties are obsolete, as much as it is why isn’t the Democratic Party doing this key part of its job.