Progressives, Liberals, Movements, and Political Parties

Cross-posted at Campaign for America's Future.

Lately I've been getting an increasing recurrence of the same questions: what is the difference between liberals and progressives, and what is the difference between the Progressive Movement and the Progressive Party? The answers to these questions are important, for as we inch ever closer to the general election in November and as primary battles across the country reach their conclusion the future of our country and our world shall be determined by them—and by how swiftly we figure them out.

The first question I shall tackle is, what is the difference between a liberal and a progressive? For that I'll quote the Huffington Post's David Sirota, who explains it far more eloquently than I can:

I often get asked what the difference between a "liberal" and a "progressive" is. The questions from the media on this subject are always something like, "Isn't 'progressive' just another name for 'liberal' that people want to use because 'liberal' has become a bad word?"

The answer, in my opinion, is no—there is a fundamental difference when it comes to core economic issues. It seems to me that traditional "liberals" in our current parlance are those who focus on using taxpayer money to help better society. A "progressive" are those who focus on using government power to make large institutions play by a set of rules.

To put it in more concrete terms: a liberal solution to some of our current problems with high energy costs would be to increase funding for programs like the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP). A more "progressive" solution would be to increase LIHEAP but also crack down on price gouging and pass laws better regulating the oil industry's profiteering and market manipulation tactics. A liberal policy towards prescription drugs is one that would throw a lot of taxpayer cash at the pharmaceutical industry to get them to provide medicine to the poor; a progressive prescription drug policy would be one that centered around price regulations and bulk purchasing in order to force down the actual cost of medicine in America (much of which was originally developed with taxpayer R&D money).

Let's be clear: most progressives are also liberals, and liberal goals in better funding America's social safety net are noble and critical. It's the other direction that's the problem. Many of today's liberals are not fully comfortable with progressivism as defined in these terms. Many of today's Democratic politicians, for instance, are simply not comfortable taking a more confrontational posture towards large economic institutions (many of whom fund their campaigns)—institutions that regularly take a confrontational posture towards America's middle-class.

In short, a modern liberal wants socio-economic justice; a progressive recognizes that in order to achieve this end, the excesses of those who actively undermine it must be reigned in. Try to imagine what it would have been like if Franklin Roosevelt had tried to pass his New Deal packages without cracking down on the laissez faire business interests that had so crippled the nation's economy. Without laws and regulations to protect Americans from the excesses of the "free" market, the New Deal would have been a miserable failure and nothing would have changed.

The second question, what is the difference between the Progressive Movement, and the Progressive Party? In order to answer this question, we must first understand what it is we stand for. At my discussion forum, Liberal-Pride.org, members and I drafted and voted upon a party platform around which members can rally:

Progressive Party Platform

1. Fighting for Economic Justice and Security in the U.S. and Global Economies

• To uphold the right to universal access to affordable, high quality health care for all.
• To preserve guaranteed Social Security benefits for all Americans, protect private pensions, and require corporate accountability.
• To invest in America and create new jobs in the U.S. by building more affordable housing, re-building America's schools and physical infrastructure, cleaning up our environment, and improving homeland security.
• To export more American products and not more American jobs and demand fair trade.
• To reaffirm freedom of association and enforce the right to organize.
• To ensure working families can live above the poverty line and with dignity by raising and indexing the minimum wage.

2. Protecting and Preserving Civil Rights and Civil Liberties

• To sunset expiring provisions of the Patriot Act and bring remaining provisions into line with the U. S. Constitution.
• To protect the personal privacy of all Americans from unbridled police powers and unchecked government intrusion.
• To extend the Voting Rights Act and reform our electoral processes.
• To fight corporate consolidation of the media and ensure opportunity for all voices to be heard.
• To ensure enforcement of all legal rights in the workplace.
• To eliminate all forms of discrimination based upon color, race, religion, gender, creed, disability, or sexual orientation.

3. Promoting Global Peace and Security

• To honor and help our overburdened international public servants – both military and civilian.
• To bring U. S. troops home from Iraq as soon as possible.
• To re-build U.S. alliances around the world, restore international respect for American power and influence, and reaffirm our nation's constructive engagement in the United Nations and other multilateral organizations.
• To enhance international cooperation to reduce the threats posed by nuclear proliferation and weapons of mass destruction.
• To increase efforts to combat hunger and the scourge of HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, and other infectious diseases.
• To encourage debt relief for poor countries and support efforts to reach the UN's Millennium Goals for Developing Countries.

4. Environmental Protection & Energy Independence

• To free ourselves and our economy from dependence upon imported oil and shift to growing reliance upon renewable energy supplies and technologies, thus creating at least three million new jobs, cleansing our environment, and enhancing our nation's security.
• To free ourselves and our economy from dependence upon imported oil and shift to growing reliance upon renewable energy supplies and technologies, thus creating at least three million new jobs, cleansing our environment, and enhancing our nation's security.
• To change incentives in federal tax, procurement, and appropriation policies to:
  1. Speed commercialization of solar, biomass, and wind power generation, while encouraging state and local policy innovation to link clean energy and job creation;
  2. Convert domestic assembly lines to manufacture highly efficient vehicles, enhance global competitiveness of U.S. auto industry, and expand consumer choice;
  3. Increase investment in construction of "green buildings" and more energy-efficient homes and workplaces;
  4. Link higher energy efficiency standards in appliances to consumer and manufacturing incentives that increase demand for new durable goods and increase investment in U.S. factories;
• To eliminate environmental threat posed by global warming and ensuring that America does our part to advance an effective global problem-solving approach.
• To expand energy-efficient transportation choices by increasing investment in synthesized networks, including bicycle, local bus and rail transit, regional high-speed rail and magnetic levitation rail projects.
• To preserve prudent public interest regulations that encourage sustainable growth and investment, ensure energy diversity and system reliability, protect workers and the environment, reward consumer conservation, and support an expanding marketplace that rewards the commercialization of energy-efficient technologies.
• To protect, preserve, restore, and where reasonably possible expand wild lands and animal and plant populations endangered by human activity, reasonably compensating businesses and homeowners for damages or losses incurred by such.

5. Abortion Rights and Legal Reductions

• Codify the 1973 Supreme Court Ruling on Roe vs Wade by passing HR 5151—the Freedom of Choice Act.
• Pass legislation and encourage community leadership to, among other acts: Increase funding to child placement services (foster care agencies); increase funding for comprehensive sex education programs that are proven to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies; increase awareness of the protective benefits of proper use of contraceptives, and increase access to them; increase funding for educational programs to spread awareness of sexually transmitted pathogens including viruses and bacteria, and their effects upon the human body; increase funding for prenatal care for unwed and low-income mothers; and expand daycare and nanny services to assist low-income families and single parents who choose to keep their children after birth.

6. Gun Control and State Militias

• Adopt reasonable gun control laws that keep guns out of the hands of criminals, while preserving the 2nd Amendment right of law-abiding citizens to keep and bear arms.
• Restore full control of the National Guard units to their respective states, maintaining both a federal standing military and the individual state-controlled and regulated Militias.

7. Legalizing Marijuana

• Legalize marijuana, and regulate it like tobacco and alcohol.
• Increase funds to existing education and rehabilitation programs; create new programs and expand existing ones where necessary, to reduce addiction; pass common sense drug laws that focus on rehabilitation for non-violent offenders; and engage parents and community leaders to educate their children on the dangers of drugs.

These positions are largely based upon the platform currently supported by the Congressional Progressive Caucus, with some additions. Now that we've established what an American Progressive Movement stands for, we may address the fundamental question: what is the difference between it and the Progressive Party?

Simply put, no movement can achieve results in this country without a strong, well organized political party to implement policy within the halls of government. Movement conservatism did not insinuate itself into and ultimately usurp without first taking over the Republican—and, eventually, the Democratic—Party. Its architects realized that in order to make its goals political reality, the movement required a well funded, organized, disciplined, and united political party through which it could carry out its mission to undo the achievements of the Twentieth Century.

Similarly, if Progressives are to mount an effective counter-movement, we must focus our energies toward building a strong, well organized and funded political party. Without some means of implementing policy through control of the institutions of power we can only keep nipping at the edges while idly hoping at some point we'll have nibbled away enough to make a difference. To this end American Progressives must make a painful decision, and quickly: do we continue to stick with a failing effort to reform the Democratic Party from within, or do we lay the foundations for a new political party and start over?

The answer to this dilemma lies in the words of Franklin Roosevelt himself, who in giving the commencement address at Oglethorpe University in 1932, said, "[i]t is common sense to take a method and try it: If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something. The millions who are in want will not stand by silently forever while the things to satisfy their needs are within easy reach. We need enthusiasm, imagination and the ability to face facts, even unpleasant ones, bravely. We need to correct, by drastic means if necessary, the faults in our economic system from which we now suffer."

It should be clear by now that the Democratic Party is probably going to fail yet again in November, unless Progressives are prepared to take drastic action to correct the problems created by both movement conservatism and socio-economic inequality. Fortunately, the seeds of true reform have already been sown is states such as Vermont and Washington. By expanding the Progressive Party to all fifty states, and by building up from the local level, we can within a few years begin to force the Democrats to fully re-embrace their Progressive base, or else suffer perpetual irrelevancy.

This is the fundamental difference between the Progressive Movement, and the Progressive Party, but it is also an outline for how we may join the two. By uniting the Progressive movement behind a political party through which it may achieve results, America may yet see an era of change come to pass—but only if we have the courage to act.

Saving the American Left

Original article subtitled The Case for a New Progressive Creed by Bernard Chazelle via Counterpunch.com.

We know that progressives are thought to be locked to the Democratic Party. We also know that progressives are pretty much ignored by said Party. Perhaps it's time for those of us on the left to find a way to be seen as more than just another special interest group.

The American left is in the throes of an existential crisis. Some say it's a failure of nerve, others a loss of belief. It is the latter. Neoliberalism has sucked the oxygen out of the left by deflating the political sphere to the economic one. The left must articulate a new creed around three principles: empowerment (the economic is ancillary to the political); social justice (the disadvantaged have an unconditional claim upon the collectivity); and decency (the state may not humiliate anyone). To make its case, the left must redefine that most exalted form of self-interest, patriotism, as pride in a society that grants all of its members the means to belong.

The question for those progressives wedded to the Democratic Party is how can they pursue these goals within the Party? Are they willing to work within a Party that, at best, is dedicated to 'pragmatism' and 'realism?' Will they be happy with the occasional scrap, such as an increase in the minimum wage, which gets thrown their way?

First, the mythology:

IE, what we are told we can 'hope' for as far as 'change' goes.

* Democrats burst with Big Ideas. Unfortunately, ballots and Big Ideas don't mix and the timing is never quite right. But you watch. Once the Congress is theirs, once the White House curtains have been picked, the Dems will get crackin' on 'em Big Ideas-or on the reelection campaign, whichever comes first.

* Big Ideas being what they are, big, squeezing them into words can be a challenge. Luckily, with academia's brightest bulbs lighting up the pup tent, liberals can articulate better than anyone why it is they can't articulate anything. So they'll pen earnest treatises on the need to call taxes "membership fees" and trial lawyers "public protection attorneys." Like it or not, this has proven quite effective, and Howard Dean, for one, likes to credit Lakoff's framing theories for his victorious run for the White House.

* Who cares if the Clintonistas and their merry band of DLC hangers-on spoiled the broth with their third-way brand of workfare centrism and smiley-face imperialism? Across the blogosphere, a nascent grassroots movement is afoot, blowing the winds of change against the Repub-lite sellout show. It's coming. This time, it's really coming!

All one has to do is look at the current Congress. This is not a progressive Congress, and the leadership is not a progressive leadership. Of course, 2008 will change everything, won't it?

Like all myths, these wishful fantasies contain a grain of truth: Democrats are diffident, tactical, and quick to concede the terms of the debate. The netroots channel genuine passion about liberal causes and the blogs are buzzing. There is palpable excitement out there on the left. A pity there is no there there. America has lefties but no left

A left would be anti-war to the point where no funds would be going for the occupation in Iraq. A left would be pushing for Single Payer. A left would be pushing for a green economy that doesn't see food as fuel or nuclear power and clean coal as viable solutions for the climate crisis.

The verdict is brutal. By virtually any measure, the United States is the least progressive nation in the developed world. It trails most of Western Europe in poverty rates, life expectancy, health care, child care, infant mortality, maternity leaves, paid vacations, public infrastructure, incarceration rates, and environmental laws. The wealth gap in the US has not been so wide since 1929. The Wal-Mart founders' family owns as much as the bottom 120 million Americans combined. Contrary to received opinion, there is now less social mobility in the US than in Canada, France, Germany, and most Scandinavian countries. The European Union attracts more foreign students than the US, including twice as many from China. Its consensus-driven polity, studies indicate, has replaced the American version as the societal model to which the developing world aspires.

This didn't all just happen over the last seven years and three months. This has been happening since at least 1969, which means that it was happening during the administrations of Carter and Clinton as well.

And yet could America be a right-wing nation of closet lefties? A Zogby poll reveals overwhelming support for rehabilitation over incarceration for young offenders. In an NES survey, those who want "government to provide many more services even if it means an increase in spending" outnumber backers of spending cuts by 2 to 1. A Pew study cites the same ratio of people who consider corporate profits excessive. It also finds that a majority of Americans believe "government should help the needy even if it means greater debt."

Will those closet lefties get these through 'hope' and 'change?' Or will they get more of the same? If 2008 is going to be a sea change year as far as politics goes, will that sea change be of the left or of the center?

Democratic leaders, bless their souls, believe no such nonsense. They'll warn you incessantly that any public policy leaning a nano-angstrom to the left is a suicide pact. They'll brush off any talk of raising the top marginal tax rate of 35% to anything approaching the 70% of the Nixon years. Yes, the progressive Bill Clinton expanded the Earned Income Tax Credit and signed the Family and Medical Leave Act. He also increased extreme poverty despite high economic growth. He extended the death penalty to non-homicides and oversaw the largest increase in incarceration rates in the 20th century (double what it was under Reagan). He exacerbated inequalities, gave up on Kyoto, and, by his own Labor secretary's account, presided over "one of the most pro-business administrations in American history." His signature social policy, welfare reform, dismantled one of the pillars of the New Deal: the federal cash assistance program for 9 million poor children (AFDC).

A center/right Democrat. Should we expect any real 'change' from a new President? Or, will we be 'blessed' with more of what the pro-business pragmatists have in mind for us?

Chazelle then does the blasphemous! He points out that many of Richard Nixon's actions we to the left of Bill Clinton. Let's write that again: On many issues, Nixon was to the left of Bill Clinton. Eeeeeeps!

The senior Democratic senator from New York, the "ultra-liberal" Chuck Schumer, recently killed efforts to raise the tax rate of hedge fund managers to that of his cleaning lady: a nice government handout to overpaid bankers that is worth, annually, half of the Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children. "I am not a populist," said Schumer. (Maybe just an opportunist.) During the 2008 presidential campaign, the New York Times gently mocked John Edwards's unauthorized concern for the poor as "raw populism." That word again. The other P-word, poverty, has acquired in the liberal mind the cosmic permanence of gravity. Much like in the Middle Ages, short of killing the poor, the thinking goes, one cannot kill poverty-even in the richest nation on earth. This capitulation to imaginary laws of economics marks the ascendancy of neoliberalism as the dominant dogma of the ruling class. This is a worldwide phenomenon but its origins are uniquely American. One may wonder: if it's worked against the interests of so many, how then did it happen?

Pro-corporate 'ultra-liberals?' Who'd have thought it? Populism as a bad term? Well, the poor don't fill the reelection coffers, now do they?

The article then goes on to explain that there was a backlash against the civil rights movement, and that welfare was the major recipient of the brunt of that backlash. The backlash allowed us to end 'welfare as we know it' under a Democratic president. Amazing. And we went along with it.

Thus shorn of social purpose, the sole objective of the economy was now to create the conditions for a bigger economy. This self-referential absurdity worked out well for some. At their prodding, politicians on both sides of the aisle wrapped the neolib agenda in cotton candy ("I feel your pain") and sold it to the public as an inclusive doctrine ("rising tides lift all boats"). While the media peddled ad nauseum the seductive narrative that unfettered growth will cure all ills, the public intellectuals played their customary herding role as guardians of the norm. Lobby-driven campaign financing did the rest. Neoliberalism became the new dogma, the pensée unique.

Needless to say. all you have to do is look at our manufacturing sector to see the fallacy of that line of thinking. The rich get richer, the super-rich get super-richer, and everyone else fights for an ever decreasing slice of a shrinking economic pie. Of course, we go along with it because we all have the chance to become rich.

The dogma tolerates social conflicts insofar as they remain orthogonal to the economic fault lines. Multiculturalism and identity politics are tolerable but class concerns are ruled out of order. Affirmative action and Roe v. Wade are fine but prenatal care and maternity leaves are "fiscally imprudent." While globalized trade has benefited many countries, the ultra-rigid neoliberal policies pushed by the United States and the international institutions it controls have had nasty consequences: per-capita income for nearly half of the world's countries was lower in 2000 than it was a decade earlier. Yet even a reasoned critique of the current economic order is seldom allowed into the dominant discourse. It's not censorship; it's gatekeeping. And it works. The withering scorn heaped upon a fine "European" centrist like Kucinich is indicative of the intolerance for any deviation from the orthodoxy.

Dissent is fine, as long as it's not economic dissent. Let's watch how much real 'change' comes from our current economic crisis. There may well be centralization of economic power, but will it be in the hands of the corporatists or we the people? Will de-regulation still be the favored action of the day?

The Great Sellout came at a price: electoral disaster. Yet, while busy mastering the fine art of the concession speech, Democrats swatted away all attempts at rebuilding a movement. To this day, their triangulating appetite for compromise remains voracious and they rarely flinch from flinching. Unless, that is, the cause is sensible but symbolic, like protesting the display of the Ten Commandments in a court of justice. Progressives need not prioritize because their moral world is flat. Why obsess over war and poverty when, instead, you can ventilate about courthouse furniture? Their creed, such as it is, is a recitation of platitudes: feel-good drivel about vibrant communities, boundless opportunities, growing prosperity, and other such controversial matters. They engage in vigorous policy debates but none of them is germane to the creed-would you expect a discussion of the Clear Skies bill to be informed by a belief in breathing?

It seems that if people have a choice of voting for true believers in the current economic order, or for those who tag along, they'll vote for the true believers. This is something to keep in mind as you consider voting for someone with a D beside their name simply because there's a D beside their name.

True, as a drive for free markets, globalization, deregulation, privatization, elimination of economic distortions, deunionization, and market-driven policymaking, neoliberalism is no more a theory of social justice than greed is a theory of property rights. It did not supplant the progressive creed so much as let it shrivel into a mere quest for decency-a noble pursuit to be sure, but one that is doomed without a set of principles to guide it. It's not enough to have your heart in the right place: your brain, and especially your will, must be there, too.

The question is does the left have any will?

TINA, Thatcher shouted from the rooftops-There Is No Alternative. Let's test this claim. America is richer than Europe; yet, to quote Jared Diamond, "Western Europe's standard of living is higher by any reasonable criterion [...]" France is slightly more productive than the United States and its Human Development Index is higher; yet its GDP per head is 25% smaller. Why? Because Americans choose to work longer hours. This was not always so: in 1970, the French worked 10% more than Americans; now they work 28% less. Apparently, There Is An Alternative. Free markets have rules and constraints, but so does piano composition, and the range from Chopin to Monk is hardly suggestive of a straitjacket. Western Europe is living proof that mixed-economy welfare states can be prosperous. The point here is not which system is better: it is that both are possible. It's all a matter of choice. TINA is a sham.

'Hope' and 'change' are all well and good, as long as they provide an alternative to our current status quo. Real 'change' would smash the neo-liberal concensus to pieces. With the choices we have between the two major parties, do we see this as a possibility?

I summarize below the main features of a progressive creed. It must articulate a purpose (what world to wish for) and a perspective (how to look at the world):

Ask yourself if our current drive for 'hope' and 'change' fit within the following features:

* The purpose is a society that, first, preserve equal liberties; second, attends preferentially to the needs of the disadvantaged. All citizens are granted an unconditional claim upon the collectivity to be accorded the minimum resources necessary for a life of dignity and a genuine sense of belonging. Freedom from humiliation is never to be made contingent on any norm of conduct (such as law abidance). Equality of opportunity is sought as the fairest means of redistributing access to fundamental liberties.

* The perspective affirms faith in the power of human agency to mediate between liberty and social justice. It posits the primacy of the political and the necessity of a wide public sphere. It favors public investments in shared goods (eg, health, education, infrastructure, and the environment). It asserts the regulatory function of the state and its role as ultimate guarantor of social provision. It regards economic growth as a means to an end and labor as an end in itself, not merely input into production. It views the concept of economic class as an indispensable measure of social stratification in policymaking. It is tolerant of economic distortions to the extent that they serve social justice or promote citizenship.

You might consider this a call to return to the idea of a Social Contract. Citizens, corporations and government all have responsibilties to each other under such a Contract.

What's missing from the progressive agenda is not the chameleon-like notion of the common good so much as the pursuit of collective mastery and the promotion of a shared sense of belonging. Abundance is the promised land of neoliberalism and shopping its highest purpose. To be a citizen is to be a consumer: "Consumo ergo sum." Such cartoonish ontological moorings induce in many the despair of the void. America's vindictive penal system indeed suggests a nation riven by fear. For this, in my view, we have less bin Laden to blame than TINA and the materialistic vacuity that goes along with it. The first order of business is to allow the polity to regain control of its environment-moral, social, and physical. The progressive creed is, first and foremost, a quest for citizenship.

We have no choice if we don't accept that there is a choice. By allowing there not to be a choice, we devalue (if not out-and-out reject) our citizenship. Both major Parties have bought into this devaluation. The question is if we on the left will continue to support this status quo.

First, some clarification. "My country, right or wrong," said Carl Schurz, echoing Decatur. After that fateful utterance, the word patriot was destined to join the select company of pedophile and macaca in the stink bomb arsenal of language. So it is with my nose firmly held that I vocally question the patriotism of those who care more about winning Fallujah than losing New Orleans. The most humiliating national shaming in recent American history, Katrina, registers barely a blip in a presidential campaign: a portrait of the patriot as an ostrich? Americans can love their country or they can turn a blind eye to poverty and segregation: they cannot do both. Patriotic citizenship is the commitment to a society that grants all of its members the means to belong. It is an affirmation of solidarity. Its motivation is the virtuous, idealized pride in an honorable society. It is also a sublimated form of self-interest: violent crime and poverty are, indeed, correlated. Most of all, it is the awareness that shame taints pride and that, despite their tenuous relation, (b) trumps or demeans (a):

We're at fault as well as the neo-libs (and neo-cons). Here's some of what we're at fault for:

* (a) The US is the world's richest nation; (b) the US outranks only Mexico in child poverty among OECD countries.(28)

* (a) America's GDP per capita is 11 times higher than Sri Lanka's; (b) life expectancy for African-American men is 3 years shorter than for males in Sri Lanka.(29,30)

* (a) African-Americans have been the force behind this country's most influential musical genres; (b) one third of all black men will go to prison at some point in their lives.

* (a) The US scoops up more Nobel prizes in medicine than any nation on earth; (b) 18,000 Americans will die this year for lack of health insurance.

Fascinating, of course. We're at the top of many areas, and yet we trail in many also. Grrrrrr....

Assuming a progressive project gets underway, what challenges lie ahead? We know where to find the problems-racism, poverty, health, child care, public schools, the penal system, infrastructure, the environment, campaign financing, etc. We know where to find the expertise-the world's best social scientists live in our midst. We know where to find the resources-highest GDP and all that. We know where to find the words for the prose of our policies and the poetry of our vision. In the public mind, however, the right is about winning and the left about not losing. A bit of a downer perhaps. The pessimism of the intellect, Gramsci said, must be balanced by the optimism of the will. The hard part of a progressive project will be to summon the moral courage to prioritize the task at hand and fuel the effort with an unshakable belief in the justness of the cause. For that, we need a creed.

We need action. We need to realize that a D next to a name is not an indication of progressivism. We need to be prepared to support those, Democrats or not, who will support a progressive future.

Originally posted here: http://rjones2818.blogspot.com/2008/04/saving-american-left.html