During my first month at the University of Wisconsin in 2005, I attended the kickoff meeting for our campus chapter of the International Socialist Organization. I was curious about the brave new world I was entering. The title of the meeting was “What Is Socialism?” There was real passion in the room, but it seemed uncomfortably unfocused — a panoply of general concerns and outrage (and not a little Bush-bashing), linked back abstractly to an undefined ideology. Although I did not join the ISO, that meeting sticks out as a formative experience in my education.

It also gave me my first priceless anecdote about Madison politics. Walking out of the ISO meeting, I was handed leaflets by several people. I told them I was just at the meeting and had gotten all the literature. “We’re protesting this group,” a girl told me. “They’re radical Marxists. We’re revolutionary Marxists.” I felt like quarreling with her for a moment, but I wasn’t sure whether she was armed. And I remembered what happened to Trotsky.

But back to the ISO. These were good, intelligent, informed people. They took many worthy positions — opposition to the confirmation of Chief Justice Roberts, holding the Bush administration accountable for its apathy during Hurricane Katrina and protesting civilian casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan. They were beyond competent at political theory, referencing Marx with envious ease. They made the College Democrats look like fifth graders at their first civics class.

But it was equally obvious to me that something was not right. For all its zany charm, this felt sloppier than it should. The title of the kickoff meeting was “What Is Socialism?” The question was never answered, even though the meeting was supposedly tailored to new recruits. A newcomer might have been forgiven for wondering whether “socialism” was anything more than the recreational activity of loosely-organized campus radicals everywhere. The meeting felt like a poetry slam without the poetry.

I bring this up in defense against Kyle Szarzynski’s column last week (“Schmidt should rethink his ‘ideals’” Jan. 29, 2009), suggesting I am — in essence — a cynical hack masquerading as a serious socialist. The Badger Herald has a long and not entirely proud history of columnist feuds, and I have no interest in banging on forever. But this space has been expended on subjects far less consequential than the (sorry) state of campus activism, let alone the future of the only worthwhile political theory of the 21st century.

This stuff matters. It matters that radical campus activists seem disinterested in breaking open the two-party system, even though this provides the only opportunity for long-term institutional change. It matters that socialism has, inexplicably, joined forces with an anti-war movement so reactionary, Pat Buchanan just wrote a book agreeing with them. It matters that in 2008, the socialist movement on campus was so unattractive and irrelevant that students settled in droves for a corporate candidate. (At least Obama supported civil unions, right? To even the most ardent wealth redistributors, the Illinois senator was better than nothing.) And it matters that I can walk into an ISO meeting my freshman year and — somehow — walk out a disillusioned cynic.

Last week (“Polls, not parades, place for progress” Jan. 28, 2009), I never demanded socialist activism cease because no third-party candidate could win a presidential election at present. I merely linked that pipe dream to a very real and obtainable possibility: a third-party candidate obtaining enough votes to qualify for federal funding in the next election cycle. Once that goal is reached, Americans will overnight have a viable third-party, present in presidential debates, competitive at every level of politics.

Szarzynski suggests this is not an appropriate strategy for socialists because third-party emergences are rare in American politics. But they’ll only be rare until that first third-party challenger reaches that first 5 percent threshold. After that the floodgates will open, and parties will exist through which every progressive aspiration imaginable can be funneled. Over the last four years, every moment spent demanding open borders, yelling at military recruiters or demanding we “Free Bucky” could have instead been spent prying those floodgates open.

Let it be said that Szarzynski is right about one thing: I am to blame too. I take as much responsibility for these political failures as anyone. I haven’t been doing my part either. But this time four years from now, I expect to be celebrating a 5 percent showing for the Green Party or some other organization. If we don’t move quickly, though, we’ll be simply facing another four years of aimless protests and petitions. Only the cynic in me wonders whether the latter hasn’t been the point all along.

Eric Schmidt ([email protected]) is a senior majoring in political science and legal studies.