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