Nathan responds: >Again with the antiwar movement. It failed miserably. Millions upon millions of Vietnamese were killed; mass bombings led to the insanity of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. Vietnam lasted from 1961 to 1973 (or 1975 with all bombings) despite the antiwar movement.<
If the anti-war movement "failed miserably," then the obvious implication is that we should have supported the war. _Or_ we should have tried to convince the powers-that-were that they weren't fighting the war using the right strategy and/or tactics; we should have been polite and correct, avoiding any challenge to the Cold War liberal consensus. Is either of these what you mean, Nathan?
(I sense (perhaps inaccurately) that Nathan is tired of the old hands from the anti-war movement talking about their youthful glories. But I'm not one of the old hands, being too young. Gee, it's nice to think of myself as "too young" in this context. It helps me feel less depressed about being older than Tony Blair.)
Are you blaming the anti-war movement for the bombing of Cambodia? don't you think Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon had something to do with it? don't you think that the fact that HK and RN responded to the anti-war movement by deepening US crimes against SE Asia says something about the systemic corruption of US politics and the capitalist system itself rather than something about the anti-war movement?
If it says something about the anti-war movement, it says that it didn't go wide or deep enough (reaching farther beyond the college campuses without getting involved in Weather Underground nonsense, etc.) We should have tried _harder_ rather than giving up (as is suggested by the phrase "failed miserably").
I would argue that _in conjunction with_ the brave fight by the Vietnamese themselves against US aggression, the anti-war movement had all sorts of political echoes as it shifted US politics to the left. A split developed within the Foreign Policy establishment which spread to other issues. Why do you think a deeply reactionary and disgusting creep such as RN presided over the creation of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency? It's because he was trying to gain political support for his own tawdry career -- in response to a leftward tilt of the body politic. (In retrospect, RN seems highly superior to Bill Clinton. But that's only because BC is similarly responding to the political mood and trying to gain support for _his_ tawdry career.)
BTW, it's ridiculous to think of the anti-war movement as giving up, since it was basically a spontaneous movement in response to the draft, the war crimes, etc.
>Frankly, majoritarian politics in 1968 came much closer to ending the war
with "Clean for Gene" than the mass mobilizations did.<
That movement is exactly the kind of "echo" I'm talking about: it was a cleaned-up, more establishmentarian, version of the main anti-war movement. Without the movement as its backbone, the C for G movement wouldn't have existed. Or if you wish the C for G movement was _part of_ the broader anti-war movement. If so, I don't see how you can damn the movement as a whole while praising a marginal part of it.
>Now, the idea that the choice is either vote for the lesser of two evils
OR do mass mobilization is silly. I think I can safely say that I have
been involved in more mass mobilizations, including arrests, than most
people on this list, yet I also vote Democratic most of the time without
grimacing (even if I hold my nose).<
No, I don't believe in either/or thinking.
In fact, I say: vote any way you want, since voting has such little effect on the world (and besides, you've proven your moral superiority already, in the above paragraph).
Rather, what I was saying (perhaps imperfectly) was that mass mobilization is what can change the nature of the choices that the national political machine hands us. Good politicians don't come because there are some good people out there who selflessly dedicate themselves to the public betterment. There are some people like that, but they don't get anywhere unless there's a political base. Having lived in Beserkley or Oakland for a few years, the example that sticks in my mind is Ron Dellums. The district didn't get a good congressrep because Dellums was a good guy (and in some ways he wasn't a good guy when he started). Rather, the district got a (relatively) good guy because the district had a high level of progressive political consciousness and organization. The anti-war movement (and similar movements, including the Black Panthers) helped create the good district that allowed a Dellums to get elected and prosper.
>In fact, the people I know most involved in mass struggles day-to-day are
more likely to vote Democrat than leftist intellectuals. Not that I don't
know great mass activists who gag when they see a donkey, but most of the
activists I know can walk and chew gum, fight in the streets to change the
balance of forces while voting for the best deal they can ("the lesser of
two evils") on election day.<
Again, the question (for me) is not about how people should vote but how politics are really made. If they want to vote Democrat, that's fine. It's a free county (as they say) and voting is a harmless indoor sport (a lonely activity, too). I vote Peace & Freedom or Green as a way of pressuring the damn Democrats and rascally Republicans, but I know that that tactic is _just as futile_ as voting for the Democrats, at least in the short-term. But I try to think long-term: if enough people start voting for P&F or the Greens, the Dems and GOPs will start moving to the left to attract those votes.
(The problem with voting for the Dems is that it just encourages them. They call for more vigorous application of the death penalty or whatever and leftist lesser-of-two-evils types still vote for them. They call for throwing everyone off of welfare and these leftists still vote for them. There' s no consequence from their bad behavior, so why should they change? They (the politicians) are like toddlers.)
>In fact, most activists have to do "lesser evilism" every time they fight
for a union contract or demand change in their communities. They take the
best they can get today and prepare for battle tomorrow.<
It's only _true_ lesser evilism if these activists simply take what is given them (the union contract) rather than trying to improve the contract, to make the union more responsive to its rank and file, to convince people of their perspective and to organize the rank and file to put forth their own perspectives rather than acting as passive members who simply vote for or against contracts and leaders.
>BTW majoritarianism is not preparing to vote for Gore; it is actually
thinking about how to frame a political strategy that could produce an
alternative who could actually win the nomination and the Presidency. It
is those who refuse to even think about an alternative majoritarian
approach that guarantee that most progressives will end up voting for Gore
in 2000- you may remain pure and vote for someone else, but if you would be
a bit less pure, you might actually get a majority to vote for someone
better.<
Frankly, this kind of movement will get nowhere unless it changes the parameters of US politics. Because the kind of majoritarianism that currently works is monetary majoritarianism. The electoral system (as currently configured) involves a large number of barriers (getting on the ballot, the primary, the nomination by the party, the final election, actually instituting the program). At each step, the bias is totally in favor of the candidate who can mobilize the most campaign contributions (or supporting ads from sympathetic organizations). While some non-capitalist organizations (e.g., the AFL-CIO) have money and can spend it to support a Wellstone (or whomever), the lion's share of the money comes from the rich, the corporations, and their PACs. They are the ones who allow candidates such as Dukakis or Clinton or Gore to rise to the top (like scum). The flurry of campaign contributions also _conditions_ the candidates never to speak or, more importantly, _act_ in a way that's not "politically correct" from the big-money perspective.
And after the election, if a Wellstone refuses to see the president of GM he's in trouble. Refusing to see Nathan Newman, on the other hand, means no trouble at all. The cappos (as my ozzie friends call them) are involved in a daily election, helping the Prez to choose his or her policies everyday. We only help on one day every four years. This is especially true since the big money types influence policy through both houses of Congress (which are peopled via the same process as the President). It's not just the capitalists of course. The Pentagon, for example, quickly taught Clinton who was boss in the "gays in the military" flap.
Further, the Prez's success in office depends on the health of the economy, something that the capitalists control. If a Wellstone steps on the moneyed interests' toes, it is likely to cause a capital strike or capital flight, as hit Mitterand in France. (You'll note how quickly Mitterand shifted to the right.) This kind of thing can knock down programs that are "objectively" good for the capitalist class as a whole, such as Canada-style single-payer national health insurance. (Even though the capitalists rule, it doesn't mean that they act in a way that serves their own best interest in the long run.)
To change the political parameters, we need grass-roots movements that move to counteract the dominance of money politics. To choose an example that should prove once and for all that I don't dig the politics of purity, I think organizations like ACORN have a progressive effect, though obviously not enough. (Does that "not enough" mean they should give up?) I do think that they're wasting their energy if they dedicate it to backing establishmentarian political candidates in hopes that if they scratch the politicians' backs, they'll get scratch in return.
Jim Devine jdevine at popmail.lmu.edu & http://clawww.lmu.edu/Departments/ECON/jdevine.html "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way and let people talk.) -- K. Marx, paraphrasing Dante A.